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Ex  Libris 
C,  K,  OGDEN 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


WHAT  CHRISTIANITY 

MEANS  TO  ME 

A    SPIRITUAL    AUTOBIOGRAPHY 


^^^^ 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


WHAT  CHRISTIANITY 
MEANS  TO  ME 

A  SPIRITUAL   AUTOBIOGRAPHY 


BY 

LYMAN  ABBOTT 


Till  we  all  come  in  the  unity  of  the  faith  and  of  the 
knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God,  unto  a  perfect  man, 
unto  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fullness  of  Christ. 


JBeto  gotfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1921 

AU  rights  reserved 


COPYEIQHT,    1921, 

Br  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  March,  1921 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    How  This  Book  Came  to  Be  Written   .     .      i 
II    I  Give  Unto  Them  the  Keys  of  the  Kingdom    14 

III  The  Church's  One  Foundation  ....     32 

IV  I  Am  Come  to  Preach  Glad  Tidings  to  the 

Poor 52 

V    I  Am  Come  to  Give  Life 64 

VI    I  Am  Come  to  Fulfill  the  Law  and  the 

Prophets 84 

VII    I  Have  Manifested  Thy  Name     ....     97 

VIII    I   Have  Come  to  Seek  and  to  Save  That 

IWhich  Was  Lost 119 

IX    I   Came  to  Give  My  Life  a  Ransom   for 

Many 146 

X    Thy  Kingdom  Come  on  Earth     .     .     ,     .171 

Epilogue 188 

Appendix      ..........    ...    .^     .  191 


^T'telJTul^^r-^ 


PROLOGUE 

iThe  Christianity  of  the  Twentieth  Century  is 
not  the  same  as  the  Christianity  of  Jesus  Christ; 
and  it  ought  not  to  be.  For  Christianity  is  a  life, 
and  after  nineteen  centuries  of  growth  it  can  no 
more  be  the  same  that  it  was  in  the  First  Century 
than  an  oak  is  the  same  as  an  acorn,  or  America 
in  1920  is  the  same  as  America  in  1787.  Jesus 
told  his  disciples  that  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
was  like  a  seed  planted,  which  from  the  least  of 
seeds  would  grow  to  be  a  great  tree.  This  is  what 
has  happened.  The  Roman  Catholic  Mass  is  quite 
different  from  the  Last  Supper  as  taken  by  Jesus 
and  his  friends  in  that  upper  chamber;  the  West- 
minster Confession  of  Faith  is  quite  different  from 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount;  the  highly  organized 
churches  of  the  present  day  are  quite  different  from 
the  Church  in  the  house  as  described  in  the  Book  of 
Acts.  During  these  nineteen  centuries  philosophers 
have  been  trying   to   interpret   Christian   life   and 

experience    and    so    have    developed    a    Christian 

vii 


viii  PROLOGUE 

theology;  reformers  have  been  trying  to  apply  the 
principles  inculcated  by  Jesus  Christ  to  the  varying 
and  often  complex  conditions  of  society  and  so  have 
developed  a  Christian  social  ethics;  men  and  women 
have  been  trying  to  express  their  experiences  in 
methods  adapted  to  their  various  temperaments  and 
so  have  developed  Christian  rituals;  pagans  coming 
into  the  Christian  life  have  brought  their  paganism 
with  them,  so  that  while  their  paganism  has  been 
Christianized  at  the  same  time  and  by  the  same 
process  Christianity  has  been  paganized. 

To-day  throughout  Christendom  we  are  submit- 
ting this  modern  Christianity  to  a  sifting  process. 
We  are  trying  to  find  out  what  in  it  is  Christian  and 
what  pagan,  what  natural  growth  and  what  artificial 
addition,  what  we  shall  accept  and  what  reject.  The 
Protestants  are  rejoiced  to  see  this  sifting  process 
going  on  in  the  Roman  Catholic  communion,  the 
Liberals  welcome  it  in  the  conservative  churches; 
personally  I  welcome  it  wherever  it  appears  and 
whatever  questions  it  asks.  Unbelief  is  less  dan- 
gerous than  insincere  beliefs.  But  in  this  book  I 
do  not  take  part  in  this  sifting  process.  Without 
attempting  to   determine   what   of   modern   Chris- 


PROLOGUE  ix 

tianity  is  true  and  what  false,  I  invite  my  reader 
to  join  me  in  an  attempt  to  get  back  of  all  the 
product  of  centuries  of  life  and  thought,  to  inquire 
what  was  Christianity  as  it  was  taught  by  Jesus 
Christ  in  the  First  Century,  to  ascertain  what  is 
essential  in  his  spirit  and  his  teaching  which  makes 
Augustine  and  Luther,  Calvin  and  Wesley,  Lyman 
Beecher  and  W.  E.  Channing,  in  spite  of  their  dif- 
ferences. Christian  teachers,  and  the  Roman 
Catholic  Sisters  of  Charity  and  the  Social  Settle- 
ment workers  Christian  despite  their  differences  in 
temperament  and  method. 

My  critical  studies  have  convinced  me  that  we 
have  in  the  New  Testament  a  fair  reflection  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  as  it  was  understood  by 
his  immediate  disciples  in  the  First  Century;  that 
there  is  no  inconsistency  between  his  teaching  and 
that  of  the  Apostle  Paul;  that  the  Fourth  Gospel 
was  written  by  the  Apostle  John,  or  by  one  or  more 
of  his  disciples  recording  reports  received  from 
him;  that  it  truly  reflects  the  mystical  aspects,  as 
Matthew  reflects  the  ethical  aspects  of  the  Master's 
teaching;  and  that,  if  we  would  understand  the 
Master,  we  must  realize  that  he  was  both  practical 


X  PROLOGUE 

and  mystical,  Oriental  and  Occidental.  But  I  do 
not  accept  the  conclusions  of  those  scholars  who 
have  attempted  to  distinguish  in  the  Gospels  be- 
tween the  teachings  of  Jesus  and  those  of  his  inter- 
preters. Such  a  discrimination  cannot  be  accom- 
plished by  grammatical  and  exegetical  methods. 

I  began  the  systematic  study  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment when  I  entered  the  ministry  in  i860.  Since 
that  time  I  have  been  a  student  of  one  book,  a 
follower  of  one  Master.  My  aim  in  life  as  teacher, 
pastor,  administrator,  editor  and  author,  has  been 
to  understand  the  principles  which  Jesus  Christ 
inculcated  and  to  possess  something  of  the  spirit 
which  animated  him,  that  I  might  apply  both  his 
principles  and  his  spirit  to  the  solution  of  the  various 
problems,  individual  and  social,  of  our  time.  Other 
books  I  have  studied,  to  other  teachers  I  have  lis- 
tened; but  in  the  main  either  that  I  might  better 
understand  Christ's  teaching  or  better  understand 
the  problems  to  which  that  teaching  was  to  be  ap- 
plied. Many  problems  which  theologians  have  at- 
tempted to  solve  I  am  content  to  leave  unsolved. 
Like  the  Hebrew  Psalmist  I  do  not  exercise  myself 
in  things  too  wonderful  for  me.     After  sixty  years 


PROLOGUE  xi 

of  study  I  still  say  with  Paul,  "  I  know  only  in  frag- 
ments and  I  teach  only  in  fragments."  After  more 
than  sixty  years  of  Christian  experience, —  for  I 
cannot  remember  the  time  when  I  did  not  wish  to  be 
a  Christian, —  I  still  say  with  him,  "  I  count  not  my- 
self to  have  apprehended  but  I  follow  after  that  I 
may  apprehend  that  for  which  also  I  am  apprehended 
of  Christ  Jesus." 

This  volume  is  an  endeavor  to  state  simply  and 
clearly  the  results  of  these  sixty  years  of  Bible  study, 
this  more  than  sixty  years  of  Christian  experience. 
The  grounds  of  my  confidence  in  the  truth  of  the 
statements  made  in  this  volume  are  the  teachings 
of  Jesus  Christ  and  his  apostles  as  reported  in  the 
New  Testament,  interpreted  and  confirmed  by  a 
study  of  life  and  by  my  own  spiritual  consciousness 
of  Christ's  gracious  presence  and  life-giving  love. 

Lyman  Abbott. 

The  Knoll, 

Cornwall-on-Hudson,  N.  Y. 


WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS 
TO  ME 

CHAPTER  I 
HOW   THIS   BOOK    CAME  TO   BE   WRITTEN 

On  this  my  eighty-fifth  birthday  I  look  back  over 
the  intervening  three-quarters  of  a  century  and  see 
myself  a  boy  of  eight  or  ten,  growing  up  in  a 
Puritan  household  under  Puritan  training. 

This  boy's  mother  is  dead,  his  father  is  hundreds 
of  miles  away,  his  home  is  with  a  grandfather  w^hom 
he  reveres  and  an  aunt  whom  he  loves.  His 
supreme  ambition  is  to  be  like  his  mother,  his 
father,  his  grandfather,  his  aunt.  They  are  his 
ideals. 

He  has  read  his  Bible,  has  attended  church,  has 
heard  sermons,  though  not  listened  to  them,  has 
been  at  Sunday  School,  has  honestly  tried  to  do 
right,  to  obey  his  conscience  and  the  laws  of  God 

I 


2         WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

as  they  have  been  explained  to  him  by  the  Bible 
and  his  religious  teachers.  He  has  heard  the  text, 
"  Thou,  God,  seest  me,"  and  has  wished  that  God 
did  not.  He  has  been  afraid  to  answer  to  God, 
has  dreaded  the  time  when  he  shall  stand  before 
God's  judgment  seat.  To  him  God  has  been  a  kind 
of  awful  and  omnipresent  police  justice,  and  he  a 
scared  culprit  who  knows  he  is  liable  to  punishment, 
but  does  not  clearly  know  why.  To  him,  in  short, 
religion  has  been  little  more  than  a  succession  of 
sinnings  and  repentings. 

As  he  has  grown  older,  he  has  had  explained  to 
him  from  the  pulpit,  often,  the  conditions  of  salva- 
tion. The  explanation,  as  he  has  understood  it,  is 
something  like  this:  He  has  broken  the  law  of 
God.  It  is  necessary  that  he  should  be  punished. 
God  is  first  of  all  a  just  God  and  must  punish  those 
who  offend  his  law.  But  Jesus  Christ  is  merciful 
rather  than  just,  perhaps  rather  more  merciful  than 
just.  He  has,  therefore,  come  to  the  earth  and 
suffered  the  penalty  of  sin  in  order  that  the  sinner 
may  be  let  off  from  that  penalty.  In  order  to  be 
let  off  from  that  penalty,  the  sinner  must  believe 
that  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Son  of  God,  that  he  has 


HOW  THIS  BOOK  CAME  TO  BE  WRITTEN        3 

come  to  earth,  and  that  he  has  suffered  the  penalty. 
This  boy,  growing  to  youth  and  from,  youth  to 
young  manhood,  cannot  bring  himself  to  believe 
anything  merely  because  he  is  told  that  he  must  be- 
lieve it.  He  wishes  to  believe  only  the  truth.  His 
temperament  is  such  that  he  cannot  accept  such  a 
theological  statement  simply  on  authority.  He  be- 
gins, therefore,  a  course  of  theological  study.  He 
gets  Pearson  on  the  Creed  and  reads  it  through. 
Then  he  takes  up  the  successive  articles  of  the  creed 
and  reads  various  treatises  elucidating  them. 
Brought  up  in  a  Puritan  household,  he  naturally 
turns  to  Puritan  divines.  He  reads  Calvin's  "  In- 
stitutes," Jonathan  Edwards  on  the  "  Will," 
D wight's  "  Theology."  But  the  more  he  studies, 
the  more  mysterious  this  theology  becomes.  It  does 
not  fit  in  with  his  ideas  of  righteousness  that  one 
person  should  be  punished  for  another  person's  sins. 
It  does  not  appeal  to  his  affections,  this  portraiture 
of  a  God  who  can  be  satisfied  only  by  inflicting  pen- 
alty on  those  who  have  done  wrong.  It  does  not 
appeal  to  his  reason,  this  religion  which  requires 
him  to  forgive  his  enemy  until  seventy  times  seven, 
yet  tells  him  that  God  will  not  freely  forgive  the 


4         WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

least  sin  of  the  most  unconscious  sinner.  His  as- 
sociations are  in  the  Church  of  Christ.  The  men 
and  women  whom  he  most  reveres  are  members  of 
that  church.  The  work  which  the  church  is  tr^ang 
to  do  increasingly  appeals  to  him.  Finally,  he  goes 
to  the  orthodox  pastor  of  an  orthodox  church  and 
explains  his  difficulty  and  states  his  experience. 
His  experience  is  very  simple :  "  I  would  like  to 
have  a  character  like  that  of  Christ  and  to  do  the 
kind  of  work  that  Christ  did  in  the  world  and  I  am 
sorry  that  my  character  is  not  more  Christlike  and 
my  work  more  worthy.  But  the  system  of  theology, 
with  its  Three-Persons-in-One  God,  its  vicarious 
atonement,  its  eternal  punishment,  its  foreordination 
and  decrees,  I  cannot  understand;  and  the  more  I 
stud}^  it,  the  less  I  understand  it."  And  the  ortho- 
dox minister  replies  to  him :  "  We  none  of  us  un- 
derstand it  very  well  and  we  should  be  glad  to  have 
you  join  the  church."  And  he  does  join  the  church. 
As  he  looks  back  upon  it,  he  has  reason  to  suspect 
that  he  was  accepted,  not  on  his  very  imperfect 
confession  of  faith,  but  on  the  fact  that  his  father 
and  his  uncle  were  members  of  the  church  and  he 


HOW  THIS  BOOK  CAME  TO  BE  WRITTEN        5 

was  believed  to  be  a  young  man  without  bad  habits. 

About  this  time  he  begins  to  attend  Plymouth 
Church  and  to  get  from  the  preaching  of  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  a  different  conception  of  theology 
and  also  a  different  conception  of  religion.  The 
change  in  his  apprehension  is  gradual,  so  gradual 
that,  as  he  looks  back  over  a  period  of  more  than 
half  a  century,  he  finds  himself  unable  to  realize  it 
with  any  vividness  or  to  describe  it  with  any  ac- 
curacy. Even  now,  as  he  attempts  to  describe  its 
result,  he  is  quite  conscious  that  his  description  is 
inadequate,  if  not  inaccurate,  and  will  be  certainly 
misunderstood,  but  it  is  something  like  this:  He 
begins  to  believe  that  Jesus  Christ  is  not  an  am- 
bassador from  God  to  Man,  not  an  intermediary 
between  God  and  Man,  not  a  victim  who  has  borne 
the  penalty  which  God  exacts  of  man,  but  God 
entering  into  a  human  life  that  he  may  enable  men 
to  understand  him. 

Suppose  that  all  your  life  you  had  dreaded  an 
awful  God,  or  in  fear  submitted  to  a  fateful  God, 
or  hesitated  between  defying  and  cringing  before 
a  hated  God,  or  vainly  sought  to  understand  a  hid- 


6        WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

ing  God,  and  suddenly  the  curtain  were  rent  aside 
and  you  saw  the  luminous  figure  of  the  living  Christ, 
and  over  his  head  were  written  the  words,  *'  This 
is  thy  God,  O  man."  Something  like  this  was  the 
experience  which  dawned  on  the  mind  of  this  youth 
growing  into  manhood.  He  had  thought  of  God 
as  infinite  power.  Here  is  a  God  revealed  to  him, 
not  by  an  awful  manifestation  of  supernatural 
power  but  by  the  endearing  manifestation  of  an  un- 
paralleled love.  He  had  thought  of  God  as  infinite 
intelligence.  Here  is  a  God,  revealed  in  the  life  of 
a  man  who  is  limited  in  his  wisdom  as  the  men 
about  him,  knowing  no  more  of  geography  or  his- 
tory or  science  than  those  whose  life  he  shares.  He 
had  thought  of  God  as  impersonated  justice,  who 
could  not  bear  to  look  upon  any  wrongdoing  and 
to  whom  the  peccadillo  of  a  child  and  the  crime  of 
a  Nero  or  a  Caligula  were  all  as  one.  He  sees  in- 
stead a  God  who  takes  the  little  children  in  his 
arms  to  bless  them,  turns  to  the  weeping,  fallen 
woman  with  the  words,  "  Neither  do  I  condemn 
thee;  go,  and  sin  no  more  ";  a  God  who  reserves  his 
indignation  for  the  hypocrite  who  devours  widows' 
houses  and  for  a  pretense  makes  long  prayers.     He 


HOW  THIS  BOOK  CAME  TO  BE  WRITTEN         7 

had  thought  of  God  as  a  great  king,  sitting  upon  a 
great  white  throne,  and  he  tried  to  send  his  prayers 
up  thither  by  a  kind  of  wireless  telegraphy,  though 
wireless  telegraphy  was  not  then  known.  But  now, 
when  he  kneels  to  pray,  he  first  reads  something 
from  the  Gospels,  then  forms  in  his  mind  a  picture 
of  Jesus,  sits  down  by  the  side  of  the  man  and 
talks  with  him  and  prayer  becomes  easy  conversa- 
tion. He  had  thought  of  God  as  an  omniscient 
judge  who  knew  him  as  the  detective  police  know 
and  dog  the  footsteps  of  a  criminal.  Now,  he  reads 
the  story  of  a  God  in  man  who  has  known  sorrow, 
has  wrestled  with  temptation,  has  understood  by 
experience  the  trials  that  come  through  the  voices 
of  ambition,  of  pleasure  and  of  affection. 

God  is  no  longer  to  him  a  great  unknown.  This 
youth,  growing  to  manhood,  no  longer  goes  to  the 
great  theologians  for  light.  He  goes  to  the  simpler 
interpreters  of  Hfe.  He  remembers  his  own  fa- 
ther, who  might  easily  have  made  for  himself  a  great 
reputation  in  science  or  in  philosophy,  but  who 
gave  himself  to  writing  books  for  children  that 
children  could  understand.  He  reads  those  letters 
of  -the  author  of  "  Alice  in  Wonderland  "  to  the 


8         WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

little  children,  and  sees  how  this  great  mathemati- 
cian shared  the  children's  life,  felt  their  enthusiasms, 
participated  in  their  imaginations,  was  a  child  with 
the  children.  And  he  begins  to  say  to  himself,  "  My 
God  has  come  to  me  as  these  authors  went  to  the 
little  children.  He  has  come  to  me  that  he  might 
write  in  his  life  on  earth  a  language  which  I  can 
understand.  He  is  one  who  sees  life  as  I  see  it,  ex- 
periences life  as  I  have  experienced  it,  shares  my  life 
with  me,  that  I  may  see  life  as  he  sees  it,  experience 
life  as  he  experiences  it,  share  his  life  with  him. 
Now  I  can  understand  him,  for  he  has  entered  into 
my  life.  We  understand  each  other.  We  are 
friends.     He  is  to  me  the  Great  Companion." 

This  boy  now  grown  to  manhood,  no  longer  goes 
up  to  the  great  white  throne  to  find  his  God,  no 
longer  anticipates  in  the  future  life  a  day  of  judg- 
ment when  he  will  stand  face  to  face  with  God. 
His  God  who  was  here  once  is  here  still.  The 
veiled,  invisible  figure  that  is  always  walking 
through  life,  always  sitting  at  all  men's  side,  was 
for  one  moment  made  so  clear  that  human  eyes  could 
see  him  and  human  hands  could  handle  him,  then, 
hidden   from  human  eyes,   escaping   from  human 


HOW  THIS  BOOK  CAME  TO  BE  WRITTEN         9 

touch,  is  the  nearer  to  us  because  invisible,  intan- 
gible. There  is  no  home  in  which  love  is  centered 
and  cradled  in  which  he  does  not  sit  as  he  sat  in 
the  home  of  Mary  and  Martha  and  Lazarus  whom 
he  loved,  no  home  where  sorrow  and  tears  have 
entered,  in  which  he  does  not  come  saying,  "  There 
is  no  death.  He  that  liveth  and  believeth  in  me 
can  never  die."  There  is  no  man  beating  upon  his 
breast  and  crying  out,  "  Oh,  thou  unknown  God, 
have  mercy  upon  me  a  sinner,"  to  whom  he  does 
not  say,  "  Thou  art  more  justified  than  the  proud 
man  who  thought  he  was  righteous."  There  is  no 
true  wedding  to  which  he  does  not  bring  the  cheer 
of  merrymaking  friendship.  There  are  no  children 
whom  he  does  not  seek  to  take  into  his  arms  and  put 
his  hands  upon  them  and  bless  them.  There  is  no 
sorrow  which  he  does  not  share  with  sorrowing 
humanity.  The  bitterest  sorrow  of  all,  remorse, 
the  sorrow  for  wrong  done  that  can  never  be  un- 
done, this  he  shares  most  of  all.  Henceforth, 
through  all  the  subsequent  years  of  this  seeker's 
life,  for  him  the  glory  of  God  shines  in  the  face  of 
Jesus  Christ.  He  has  no  interest  in  theological 
debates    concerning    the    metaphysical    relation    of 


10      WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Jesus  of  Nazareth  to  the  Eternal.  He  finds  no 
satisfaction  in  scholastic  definitions  of  a  triune  andi 
little  known  God,  in  the  ecclesiastical  characteriza- 
tions of  Jesus  as  Liglit  of  Light,  Very  God  of 
Very  God,  Begotten  not  Made,  and  the  like.  His 
interest  is  in  the  divine  light  which  Jesus  Christ 
has  brought  into  the  world.  His  satisfaction  is  in 
the  experience  of  fellowship  with  the  God  revealed 
in  Jesus  Christ, —  a  God  who  is  upoa  the  earth  and 
whose  life  is  ever  a  Christ  life, —  a  life  of  love, 
service  and  sacrifice. 

Inspired  by  this  faith  in  a  God  whose  glory  is 
reflected  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ,  he  is  possessed 
with  a  growing  desire  to  give  this  faith  to  others. 
It  means  so  much  to  him.  It  so  lightens  burdens, 
strengthens  purpose,  inspires  with  courage,  solves 
perplexities,  simplifies  life,  bestows  peace,  that  he 
longs  to  give  to  others  the  gift  which  has  been  given 
to  him.  He  leaves  his  chosen  profession  of  the 
law,  not  because  he  is  dissatisfied  with  it,  but 
because  he  is  eager  to  devote  all  his  engeries  to  the 
joyous  task  of  giving  to  others  the  glad  tidings 
which  have  made  him  glad. 

To  that  purpose  he  has  now  for  sixty  years  given 


HOW  THIS  BOOK  CAME  TO  BE  WRITTEN       ii 

himself  in  various  forms  of  activity,  but  with 
unvarying  purpose.  As  pastor,  secretary,  editor, 
author,  he  has  had  no  other  aim.  As  preacher  he 
has  known  no  other  sennon.  His  first  book  was  a 
Life  of  Jesus  Christ;  his  second,  a  volume  on  certain 
New  Testament  aspects  in  Old  Testament  teachings; 
his  third,  a  Commentary  on  the  New  Testament. 
When  he  has  written  on  the  Bible,  it  has  been  to 
interpret  the  prophets  and  apostles  of  the  olden 
time  as  messengers  of  a  God  revealed  in  man. 
When  he  has  written  on  theology,  it  has  been  to 
interpret  life  as  a  discipline  of  men  being  made 
God-like.  When  he  has  written  on  politics  or 
sociology,  it  has  been  to  throw  some  light  on  the  path 
that  leads  to  the  kingdom  of  God.  When  he  has 
written  as  editor  of  a  weekly  journal,  it  has  been  to 
interpret  current  history  in  its  relation  to  this  devel- 
opment of  the  human  race  and  to  apply  to  current 
problems,  individual  and  social,  the  principles  incul- 
cated by  Jesus  Christ  and  still  more  the  spirit  which 
Jesus  Christ  possessed.  From  first  to  last,  he  has 
been  a  student  of  one  book,  the  New  Testament. 
Other  books  he  has  studied,  including  the  Old 
Testament,  for  the  light  they  throw  either  on  the 


12       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

teaching  of  the  New  Testament  or  on  the  sorrowful 
conditions  of  human  life  for  which  Jesus  Christ 
has  brought  a  remedy.  From  first  to  last,  he  has 
been  a  disciple  and  a  follower  of  one  Master.  A 
Congregationalist  because  he  was  born  and  brought 
up  in  the  Congregational  Church,  he  has  been 
equally  ready  to  work  with  prelate  or  layman. 
Catholic  or  Protestant,  believer  or  agnostic,  Jew 
or  Gentile,  whether  he  formally  acknowledged 
allegiance  to  Jesus  Christ  or  not,  provided  he  was 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  Christ  and  was 
endeavoring  to  inculcate  the  principles  of  the  Christ. 
That  he  has  always  been  correct  in  his  own  interpre- 
tations, he  does  not  imagine.  .But  looking  back 
over  that  sixty  years,  he  can  and  does  affirm,  as  in 
the  presence  of  the  Master,  that  his  one  controlling 
purpose  has  been  to  give  to  others  that  secret  of  a 
happy  life  which  he  has  found  in  his  faith  that  Jesus 
the  Christ,  is  the  Savior  of  all  men,  especially  of 
them  that  believe. 

And  now  that  he  has  passed  four  score  years,  he 
attempts  to  set  down  here,  simply  and  clearly,  what 
he  believes  is  the  message  which  Jesus  Christ  has 
brought  to  the  world.     This  book  has  long  lain  in 


HOW  THIS  BOOK  CAME  TO  BE  WRITTEN       13 

his  mind.  Its  failings  will  not  be  due  to  lack  of 
meditation;  they  will  be  due  to  the  fact  that  no 
one  man  can  tell  all  that  Christianity  means.  He 
can  only  tell  what  Christianity  means  to  him.  This 
book,  therefore,  will  be  a  fragment,  as  every  book 
on  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  must  be  a  frag- 
ment. "  We  know  in  fragments  and  we  prophesy 
in  fragments,"  says  the  Apostle  Paul.  I  am  content 
to  add  my  fragment  to  those  contributed  by  abler 
predecessors  and,  as  this  volume  sums  up  the 
teaching  of  a  lifetime,  it  will  repeat  sometimes, 
doubtless  in  form  as  well  as  in  substance,  what  the 
writer  has  before  taught;  and  as  the  writer's  under- 
standing of  the  Master  has  grown  and,  therefore, 
changed  from  year  to  year,  this  interpretation  will 
be  inconsistent  probably  in  more  than  one  passage 
with  interpretations  which  he  has  before  given  to 
the  world.  Nor  does  he  intend  to  make  any  apology 
for  either  the  interpretation  or  the  inconsistency, 
for  his  aim  is  not  to  exhibit  either  originality  or 
consistency,  but  to  interpret  to  others  that  message 
of  life  which  more  than  half  a  centur>-  of  study  in 
and  meditation  upon  the  life  and  teachings  of  the 
Master  have  interpreted  to  him. 


CHAPTER  II 

I  GIVE  UNTO  THEM  THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KIISTGDOM  ^ 

I  WAS  ordained  to  the  Christian  ministry  in  i860, 
my  first  pastorate  was  in  Terre  Haute,  Indiana, 
and  almost  my  first  pastoral  activity  was  the  or- 
ganization of  a  Congregational  Bible  Class  for 
the  study  of  the  Life  of  Christ.  Its  membership 
included  men  and  women  of  every  variety  of 
religious  opinions,  some  of  them  not  in  my  congre- 
gation. One  elderly  gentleman  was  a  Calvinist 
who  always  doubted  whether  he  had  been  elected, 
another  brought  up  under  the  religious  instruction 
of  Dr.  Furness  in  Philadelphia  and  Theodore 
Parker  in  Boston,  believed  with  the  latter  that  a 
"  perfect  man  "  was  but  the  dream  of  silly  school 
girls.  There  were  two  rules  and  only  two  for  the 
government  of  the  class:  the  first,  that  every  mem- 
ber was  absolutely  free  to  express  his  opinion  with- 
out hindrance ;  the  other,  that  while  the  freest  inter- 

1  See  Appendix  I. 

14 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  15 

chang-e  of  opinions  was  encouraged,  debate  was  not 
allowed.  We  studied  the  Life  together  in  a  quite 
frank  and,  I  beheve,  very  honest  endeavor  to  learn 
from  the  original  narratives  what  we  could  of  the 
character,  mission  and  teachings  of  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth. We  all  had  our  prejudices  but  we  could  not 
assume  them  to  be  true.  Whatever  belief  any  one 
of  us  entertained  he  must  be  able  to  make  clear  to 
himself  in  order  to  make  it  clear  to  his  neighbor. 
These  prejudices,  freely  presented  but  neither 
attacked  nor  defended  and  never  treated  otherwise 
than  with  respect,  had  a  tendency  to  neutralize  one 
another.  In  such  an  atmosphere  I  found  necessity 
for  much  more  severe  study  than  I  had  ever  known 
in  college.  My  original  conception  that  Jesus 
Christ  was  the  founder  of  one  of  the  four  or  five 
great  world  religions,  that  this  religion  had  in  its 
foundation  a  well  defined  theology,  a  church  organ- 
ization and  a  form  or  forms  of  worship,  and  that 
the  present  variations  in  creed,  church  organization 
and  forms  of  worship  are  either  corruptions  which 
have  crept  into  the  church  or  unessential  and  per- 
missible variations,  was  rudely  shaken  in  that  first 
year  of  joint  study.     Subsequent  studies  have  not 


i6       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

reestablished  that  conception.  They  have  over- 
thrown it. 

I  no  longer  regard  Jesus  Christ  as  the  Founder  of 
a  system;  I  regard  him  as  the  Giver  of  life.  I  still 
think  that  the  various  Christian  creeds,  rituals  and 
churches  are  instruments  more  or  less  honestly 
intended  to  promote  in  the  community  the  spirit  and 
teachings  of  Jesus  Christ.  But  I  do  not  think  that 
any  creed  or  combination  of  creeds  can  adequately 
define  Christian  thought,  or  that  any  forms  of 
worship  constitute  an  adequate  expression  of  Chris- 
tian experience,  or  that  any  church  or  all  churches 
united  can  be  an  adequate  instrument  of  Christian 
activity. 

There  lies  before  me  as  I  write  the  creed  of 
Plymouth  Church  (Brooklyn)  adopted  in  1848.  It 
is  no  longer  subscribed  by  its  membe'rs,  but  in  i860 
assent  was  still  required,  and  it  fairly  represents 
the  theological  opinions  of  liberal  orthodoxy  at  that 
time.  It  affirms  belief  in  one  true  God,  Sovereign, 
Infinite  in  Power,  Wisdom  and  Goodness,  in  the 
Bible  as  an  authoritative  rule  of  faith  and  practice, 
in  the  Trinity,  in  the  Fall  of  Adam  and  in  the 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  17 

vicarious  atonement.  I  had  been  commissioned  as 
a  Congregational  minister,  part  of  whose  duties  it 
was  to  teach  a  system  of  theology  of  which  these 
articles  were  an  essential  part.  But  when  I  came 
to  study  the  teachings  of  Jesus  with  my  fellow 
students  in  this  Congregational  Bible  Class,  I  found 
that  he  never  mentioned  vicarious  atonement  or  the 
Fall  of  Adam  or  the  Trinity,  and  while  he  often 
quoted  the  Old  Testament  and  always  with  a  respect 
if  not  with  a  reverence  which  he  never  paid  to  the 
traditional  teaching  of  the  synagogue,  he  never 
apparently  relied  upon  it  as  an  authoritative  rule  of 
faith  and  practice.  He  said  little  or  nothing  about 
the  Power  or  Sovereignty  of  God,  but  much  about 
his  Fatherly  care  and  forgiving  kindness;  nothing 
about  a  Trinity,  though  much  about  his  own  spiritual 
oneness  with  his  Father;  he  condemned  in  no  un- 
certain terms  the  sins  of  his  time  but  never  traced 
them  back  to  Adam;  he  said  much  about  self-sacri- 
fice, but  nothing  about  priestly  sacrifice  to  atone  for 
sin.  He  never  offered  sacrifice  himself  and  never 
counseled  his  disciples  to  do  so;  and  never  required 
or  referred  to  any  sacrifice  as  a  condition  of  the 


i8       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

forgiveness  which  he  freely  offered  In  his  Father's 
name  to  those  who  wished  to  abandon  their  sin  and 
escape  from  their  bondage  to  it.^ 

It  was  not,  however,  merely  a  Congregational 
polity  and  a  Congregational  creed  which  I  failed  to 
find  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus;  I  found  there  no 
system  of  ecclesiasticism  and  no  system  of  theology. 
Ecclesiastlcism  is  defined  by  the  Century  Dictionary 
as  "  devotion  to  the  interests  of  the  church  and  the 
extension  of  its  influence  in  its  external  relations." 
I  did  not  find  in  the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus 
Christ  any  devotion  to  the  interests  of  the  church' 
or  the  extension  of  Its  influence  In  its  external  rela- 
tions. Theology  Is  defined  by  the  Century  Dic- 
tionary as  "  the  science  concerned  with  ascertaining, 
classifying  and  systematizing  all  attainable  truth 
concerning  God  and  his  relation  to  the  universe." 
I  did  not  find  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ  any 
endeavor  to  classify  or  systematically  define  all 
attainable  truth  concerning  God  and  his  relations  to 
the  universe.     He  was  neither  a  priest  nor  a  rabbi, 

1  His  direction  to  the  leper  in  Mark  i :  44  was  to  fulfill  a 
sanitary  regulation  which  required  a  leper  to  get  a  health  cer- 
tificate from  the  priest  before  the  ban  was  removed  and  he 
could  -again  mingle  with  people. 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  19 

and  it  was  brought  against  him  as  an  accusation 
by  his  critics  that  he  had  never  received  a  theological 
education.  He  did  not  choose  the  companions  of 
his  ministry  from  either  priests  or  Rabbis ;  he  and  his 
companions  were  lay  preachers  and  neither  he  nor 
they  performed  priestly  functions.  He  urged  upon 
his  disciples  the  privilege  of  prayer  and  he  attended 
the  synagogue  services  on  the  Sabbath  day,  but  he 
never  urged  public  worship  as  a  duty  on  others,  and 
he  was  as  ready  to  preach  in  the  private  houses,  in 
the  fields,  or  from  the  prow  of  a  fishing  boat  as  in  a 
house  dedicated  to  the  worship  of  God.  Apparently 
all  places  were  equally  sacred  to  him. 

Nor  did  I  find  in  Christ's  teaching  any  provision 
of  a  new  theology  or  a  new  ecclesiastical  system  to 
take  the  place  of  the  old.  Hfe  made  no  attack  on 
the  religious  forms  or  institutions  of  his  time 
though  he  evidently  did  not  regard  them  of  vital 
importance.  Born  a  Jew,  he  remained  a  Jew  to  the 
day  of  his  death,  yet  he  commended  a  Roman  cen- 
turion as  possessing  greater  spiritual  faith  than  any 
orthodox  Israelite  he  had  ever  seen,  and  told  his 
hearers  that  there  were  pagans  who  would  go  into 
the  Kingdom  of  God  and  there  were  Israelites  who 


20       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

would  be  cast  out.  His  teaching  was  not  theological 
but  vital.  He  taught  men,  says  one  of  his  earliest 
disciples,  how  to  live  —  soberly,  righteously  and 
godly,  looking  for  the  appearing  of  God.  It  has 
grown  increasingly  clear  to  me  with  the  passing 
years  that  the  most  radical  difference  between  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  Qirist  and  that  of  the  churches 
is  this :  Jesus  taught  men  how  to  live ;  the  churches 
have  taught  men  what  to  think:  Jesus  tested  men 
by  their  lives;  the  churches  have  tested  them  by 
their  beliefs. 

The  notion  that  Jesus  organized  a  Christian 
church  to  take  the  place  of  the  decaying  Jewish 
church  has  very  little  evidence  to  support  it.  The 
word  church  occurs  only  twice  in  the  Gospels,  and 
the  Greek  word  means  assembly  or  mass-meeting. 
It  would  not  be  inapt  to  translate  it  "  town-meet- 
ing".^ In  Galilee,  finding  the  time  too  short  and 
the  work  too  large  for  his  own  unaided  ministry, 
Jesus  selected  twelve  from  among  his  followers  and 
commissioned  them  to  preach  in  the  villages  while 
he  preached   in   the  cities.^     Later,   in  the  larger 

*  See  next  chapter. 

2  Compare  Matthew  9:  35,  11 :  i,  Luke  9:6. 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  21 

region  beyond  Jordan,  he  selected  seventy  itinerant 
ministers  for  a  similar  work.^  The  commission 
was  essentially  the  same  in  both  cases.  In  neither 
case  was  there  a  hint  in  the  appointment  that  it 
was  permanent,  or  that  the  ministers  were  to  appoint 
successors,  or  were  to  continue  their  work  after  the 
designated  service  had  been  rendered.  In  neither 
case  were  the  directions  which  he  gave  of  a  kind 
that  are  applicable  to  our  time,  and  no  church  of 
our  time  endeavors  to  conform  to  them. 

That  he  prescribed  baptism  and  the  Lord's  Sup- 
per as  permanent  ordinances  appears  to  me  to  rest 
on  an  equally  slight  foundation.  Almost  the  sole 
evidence  to  support  this  opinion  is  the  fact  that 
they  early  became  church  ordinances,  and  the  as- 
sumption that  he  must  have  foreseen  and  intended 
what  in  fact  came  to  pass. 

The  history  of  baptism,  as  it  is  related  to  the 
teaching  and  preaching  of  Jesus  Christ  is  very 
simple.  Among  the  ceremonial  washings  common 
among  the  Jews,  probably  the  one  to  which  they 
attached  the  greatest  importance  was  the  baptism 
of  proselytes.     When  a  pagan  desired  to  become  a 

1  Luke  10:  1-17. 


22       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Jew,  he  was  immersed  in  water  as  a  sign  that  he 
washed  away  his  old  sins  and  his  old  superstitions 
and  emerged  a  new  man.  He  was  said  to  be  born 
again.  He  ceased  to  be  a  pagan ;  he  became  a  Jew. 
When  John  the  Baptizer  began  his  ministry,  it  was 
with  the  declaration  that  the  Jew  needed  cleansing 
no  less  than  the  pagan.  You  call  yourselves,  he 
said,  children  of  Abraham.  God  could  make  out 
of  the  stones  at  your  feet  as  good  children  as  you 
are.  To  emphasize  his  teaching  he  called  on  them 
to  be  baptized  and  reenter  the  Church  of  God  as 
though  they  had  been  pagans.  So  in  our  own  time 
a  civic  reformer,  denouncing  the  corruption  of  the 
people,  might  call  on  native  Americans  to  take  out 
naturalization  papers  and  so  renew  their  vows  of 
loyalty  to  their  country.  Jesus  at  the  very  begin- 
ning of  his  ministry  insisted  that  John  should  bap- 
tize him ;  not  —  this  is  clear  from  their  dialogue  — 
because  he  needed  to  be  purified,  nor  because  he 
thought  there  was  any  purifying  value  in  the  water, 
but  because  he  wished  to  identify  himself  in  the 
public  mind  with  the  one  moral  reform  of  his  time. 
In  spirit  and  purpose  he  was  one  with  John  the 
Baptizer,  though  not,  as  he  afterward  explained,  in 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  23 

doctrine  and  method.  While  he  remained  at  the 
ford  of  the  river  Jordan,  preaching  with  John  the 
Baptizer  the  necessity  for  a  national  repentance, 
his  disciples,  who  had  themselves  been  the  disciples 
of  John  and  had  been  baptized  by  him,  adopted  his 
symbol,  though  Jesus  himself  did  not,  and  they  do 
not  appear  to  have  employed  it  after  they  left  the 
Jordan  —  at  least  there  is  no  record  of  their  having 
done  so.  After  his  resurrection  he  gave  them  their 
commission,  Go  ye  therefore  and  teach  all  nations, 
baptizing  them  in  the  name  of  the  Father  and  of 
the  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  But  this  was  not  a 
direction  to  baptize  with  water  and  use  a  prescribed 
formula.  In  fact  the  disciples  apparently  did  not 
ordinarily  use  this  formula.  They  baptized  in  the 
name  of  Jesus. ^  It  was  a  direction  to  bring  all 
peoples  into  personal  relations  with  the  universal 
Father  as  he  is  interpreted  by  the  life  of  his  son 
and  by  fellowship  with  his  spirit.  He  required  not 
a  sign  but  the  life  signified  by  that  sign;  and  to 
the  existing  symbol,  with  which  they  were  familiar, 
he  gave  a  new  significance.  That  this  new  signifi- 
cance imposes  that  symbol  and  a  particular  method 
1  Acts  7 :  38,  8 :  15,  10 :  48,  19:5;  Rom.  6:3;  Gal.  3  :  27. 


24       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

of  its  use  upon  the  church  for  all  time  does  not  seem 
to  me  a  tenable  proposition.  The  sacredness  of 
baptism  rests  upon  its  antiquity  as  a  rite  and  its 
fitness  for  its  purpose.  Certainly  since  it  was 
never  administered  by  Jesus  Christ  himself,  it  can 
hardly  be  called  a  part  of  the  ecclesiasticism  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

Nor  can  the  Lord's  Supper  be  so  regarded. 

The  passage  of  the  Red  Sea  by  the  Children  of 
Israel  was  celebrated  by  a  supper.  This  paschal 
supper  was  a  family,  not  a  church,  festivity.  The 
father  administered  it  and  originally  himself  killed 
the  lamb  for  the  table.  No  priest  had  any  official 
part  in  it.  Just  before  his  death,  Jesus  Christ 
arranged  to  sit  down  with  his  especial  friends  at  this 
paschal  supper.  He,  who  was  not  a  priest,  presided 
at  the  table  as  the  father  of  the  household.  He  took 
the  occasion  to  give  his  friends  some  last  words  of 
counsel,  of  inspiration,  and  of  affection.  And  he 
asked  his  disciples  that  thereafter,  when  they  sat 
down  to  the  paschal  supper,  they  should  make  him, 
as  it  were,  their  guest;  and  that  they  should  not 
merely  recall  the  deliverance  of  Israel  at  the  Red 
Sea,  but  should  remember  him  —  his  life,  his  love, 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  25 

his  sacrifice.  Did  his  words  mean  anything  more? 
Perhaps.  Perhaps  they  meant  a  request  that  for  all 
time  his  disciples  should  make  him  their  guest ;  that 
for  all  time  they  should  break  bread  with  him  and 
renew  their  pledge  of  loyalty  and  love;  that  every 
household  meal  should  be  a  sacred  meal.  But 
surely  this  request  for  love  is  despoiled  of  its 
highest  meaning  when  it  is  transformed  into  a  com- 
mand for  a  ceremonial  observance.  Surely, 
whether  it  be  complied  with  in  a  meeting-house  or 
a  cathedral,  kneeling  before  an  altar  or  sitting  in  a 
pew,  in  a  sacred  church  or  in  the  more  sacred  home, 
administered  by  a  priest  or,  as  the  Last  Supper  was 
administered,  by  a  layman,  it  is  not  a  church  ordi- 
nance but  a  family  festival,  truly  called  a  "  Com- 
munion "  because  it  is  a  feast  of  sacred  fellowship, 
truly  called  a  "  Eucharist  "  because  it  is  a  thanks- 
giving of  sacred  love.  It  cannot  be  counted  a  part 
of  the  ecclesiasticism  of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  institutions  of  Christianity,  however  im- 
portant they  may  be,  were  not  framed  by  Christ 
and  imposed  on  his  followers.  They  were  gradu- 
ally developed  by  his  followers  after  his  death. 

The   story   of   the  life   and   teachings   of   Jesus 


26       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Christ  carried  out  into  the  pagan  world  by  his 
disciples  appealed  to  universal  instincts  of  humanity. 
That  story  inspired  aspirations  before  unknown  and 
showed  that  they  could  be  realized;  it  created  a  new 
ideal  of  life  by  portraying  it  as  a  realized  ideal;  it 
awoke  slumbering  desires  and  transformed  them 
into  a  resolute  purpose.  It  did  more;  it  came  to 
the  poor,  the  slave,  the  outcast  and  the  despairing 
as-  Jesus  had  come  to  Lazarus  and,  like  Lazarus, 
they  came  forth  from  their  tombs,  but  still  bound 
hand  and  foot  with  grave  clothes.  Christianity 
converted  paganism,  but  paganism  changed  Chris- 
tianity. The  new  life  took  on  the  forms  of  the  old. 
Statues  of  pagan  gods  were  renamed  for  the  Bible 
heroes  and  Christian  saints;  pagan  temples  were 
converted  into  Christian  churches;  pagan  festival 
days  were  retained  as  Christian  holy  days;  pagan 
ceremonies  were  preserved  but  rechristened  and 
given  a  new  significance.  The  Christian  Brother- 
hoods took  on  the  form  of  organizations  with  which 
people  were  familiar.  In  Greek  communities, 
where  the  democratic  town  meeting  was  not  un- 
known, the  churches  were  democratic  or  Congre- 
gational.    In    Jewish    communities    the    converted 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  27 

synagogue  became  a  Christian  church,  but  adopted 
the  form  of  the  synagogue,  which  was  Presbyterian. 
As  soon  —  and  it  was  very  early  —  as  two  or  more 
churches  in  a  city  or  moderately  sized  district  came 
to  coexist  side  by  side,  cooperation  was  desired 
in  the  interest  of  both  fellowship  and  efficiency,  and 
the  minister  of  one  of  these  churches  became  either 
by  natural  preeminence  in  character  or  by  the 
choice  of  the  others,  an  overseer  over  all  the 
churches,  and  so  the  bishopric  grew  up.  As  the 
Christian  religion  became  the  official  religion  of 
Rome,  it  adopted  the  Roman  form  of  government; 
the  bishop  of  Rome  became  the  head  of  an  imperial 
church  and  bishops  and  archbishops  became  its 
provincial  governors. 

The  teaching  of  the  church  Inevitably  felt  the 
same  influence.  Christian  thought  could  not  affect 
pagan  thought  without  being  in  turn  affected. 
Paul  warned  his  disciples  against  mistaking  phil- 
osophy for  religion,  loyalty  to  opinion  for  loyalty 
to  a  Person,  conversion  of  the  intellect  for  the  con- 
version of  the  will : —  but  his  meaning  was  uttered 
in  vain.  In  the  Apostolic  times  the  one  condition 
of  joining  the  Christian  Brotherhood  was  loyalty  to 


28       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Jesus  and  baptism  as  a  symbol  of  enlistment  in  his 
cause.  By  the  sixth  century  the  imperial  church 
had  substituted  for  this  simple  expression  of  fidelity 
to  a  Person  the  Athanasian  creed  with  its  incompre- 
hensible definition  oi  the  Trinity  "  which  except  a 
man  believe  faithfully  he  cannot  be  saved."  Chris- 
tianity had  not  wholly  ceased  to  be  a  life,  but  it  had 
become  a  system,  and  acceptance  of  the  system  was 
accounted  essential  to  salvation.  More  importance 
was  attached  to  baptism  than  to  dedication  to 
Christ's  service.  More  importance  was  attached  to 
the  proper  celebration  of  the  Lord's  Supper  than 
to  that  fellowship  of  all  Christian  disciples  with 
each  other  and  with  their  Master  of  which  the 
Lord's  Supper  had  been  a  symbol.  More  im- 
portance was  attached  to  a  correct  understanding 
of  the  doctrine  of  vicarious  sacrifice  than  to  the 
practice  of  self-sacrifice.  More  importance  was 
attached  to  belief  in  the  Trinity  than  to  a  divine 
life  of  faith  and  hope  and  love,  that  is,  to  a  life 
of  vision,  aspiration  and  service.  The  apostle 
James  had  said  that  pure  religion  and  undefiled  is 
"  to  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in  their  afflic- 
tion   and    to    keep    himself    unspotted    from    the 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  29 

world."  But  there  are  even  to-day  many  Protestant 
churches  and  many  Protestant  pastors  who  regard 
regular  attendance  on  church  services  on  Sunday 
and  on  prayer  meetings  during  the  week  as  better 
evidence  of  Christian  piety  than  either  keeping 
oneself  free  from  the  spirit  of  worldliness  or  visiting 
the  fatherless  and  widows  in  their  affliction.  The 
Christian  church  has  provided  itself  with  theological 
meat  and  ecclesiastical  raiment  and  has  too  often 
regarded  the  raiment  as  more  than  the  body  and 
the  meat  as  more  than  the  life.  Paul  defined  the 
church  as  the  body  of  Christ  through  which  Christ 
has  to  carry  to  its  completion  his  divine  mission. 
The  church  has  defined  itself  as  a  "  congregation  of 
faithful  men  in  which  the  Word  of  God  is  preached 
and  the  Sacraments  be  duly  administered,"  and  it 
has  now  proposed  to  attempt  a  union  of  all  the 
churches  of  Christ  on  four  foundations  —  the 
Bible ;  two  historic  creeds ;  the  two  Sacraments, 
Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper ;  and  the  Episcopate. 
The  notion  that  this  would  open  the  door  to  all 
believers  can  hardly  be  entertained  by  any  thought- 
ful Christian.  There  were  Old  Testament  saints 
before   the   Old    Testament   and    New    Testament 


30       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

saints  before  the  New  Testament;  the  glorious 
company  of  the  apostles  and  the  noble  army  of  the 
martyrs  existed  for  many  years  before  any  creed 
was  formulated;  the  church  has  produced  no  more 
devoted  followers  of  Jesus  Christ  than  such  saintly 
Quakers  as  John  Woolman  and  John  G.  Whittier; 
and  the  Episcopate  has  furnished  no  greater 
preachers  of  the  Gospel  than  those  of  the  Puritan, 
the  Moravian  and  the  Methodist  churches. 

Jesus  gave  to  his  disciples  no  creed;  but  he  in- 
spires them  with  an  ambition  to  study  the  invisible 
world  to  which  they  belong  and  of  which  they  are  a 
part  and  their  beliefs  respecting  this  world  they  have 
expressed  in  creeds.  He  prescribed  for  them  no 
ritual;  but  he  inspires  in  them  the  experiences  of 
penitence,  reverence,  gratitude,  and  consecration, 
and  these  experiences  they  have  expressed  in 
rituals.  He  organized  no  church;  but  he  gave 
them  work  to  do  which  they  could  do  only  by 
united  effort,  and  the  organizations  which  they 
have  created  for  that  purpose  are  the  church. 

Are  we  then  to  consider  the  church  as  a  human 
or  a  divine  institution?  I  reply,  divine  in  its  mis- 
sion,  divine  in   the   spirit   of   life  with   which   its 


THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM  31 

master  endows  it;  but  human  in  its  forms  of  belief, 
of  worship,  and  of  organization.  This  two-fold 
character  of  the  church  has  given  to  it  a  strangely 
contradictory  character  and  career,  and  to  that 
aspect  of  its  character  and  career  and  the  causes 
which  have  produced  it  I  next  direct  the  attention 
of  the  reader. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    church's    one    FOUNDATION 

Only  twice  in  the  four  gospels  does  the  word 
church  occur,  and  in  only  one  of  those  instances  do 
the  words  of  Jesus  throw  any  light  on  what  the 
nature  of  that  church  should  be.  But  before  turn- 
ing to  these  passages  it  is  necessary  to  guard  against 
a  common  error  in  reading  the  New  Testament. 
We  naturally  give  to  the  words  there  the  meaning 
which  they  now  bear;  but  this  is  often  quite  dif- 
ferent from  the  meaning  which  they  originally 
bore.  Thus  the  word  church  calls  up  to  our  mind 
a  picture  either  of  the  Protestant  Church  with  its 
pulpits  and  its  preachers  or  of  the  Catholic  Church 
with  its  altars  and  its  priests.  But  to  suggest  an 
idea  analogous  to  either  picture  Jesus  would  have 
used  the  word  synagogue  or  the  word  temple.  The 
word  ecclesia,  rendered  in  our  English  version 
"  Church,"  was  in  earlier  versions  rendered  Con- 
gregation, and  when  used  in  the  Greek  version  of  the 

22 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION         33 

Old  Testament  it  is  still  rendered  Congregation. 
In  the  Old  Testament,  as  in  classical  Greek,  it  signi- 
fied either  a  mass  meeting  of  the  people  or  a  popular 
assembly  representing  them,  somewhat  resembling 
the  American  House  of  Representatives  or  the 
English  House  of  Commons.  Bearing  this  fact  in 
mind,  we  may  now  turn  to  the  passage  in  Christ's 
Teaching  in  which  he  indicates  the  foundation  of 
his  Church  or  Congregation. 

Jesus  had  been  preaching  for  about  a  year,  and 
the  twelve  disciples  had  been  accompanying  him, 
listening  to  his  preaching,  doing  a  little  preaching 
themselves,  and  gradually  learning  the  truth  which 
he  had  come  to  proclaim.  He  had  taken  them 
apart  by  themselves,  partly  for  rest,  partly  for  per- 
sonal religious  instruction, —  the  first  of  those 
"  Retreats "  which  have  been  not  any  too  fre- 
quently held  by  his  followers  since.  He  pursued 
the  Socratic  method.  He  asked  them,  "  Who  do 
men  say  that  I  am  ?  "  "  Some  that  thou  art  John 
the  Baptizer;  some  Elijah;  others  Jeremiah  or  one 
of  the  prophets."  "  But  who  do  ye  say  that  I 
am?"  To  this  question  one  of  the  disciples 
answered,    "  Thou   art    the    Messiah,    the   son    of 


34       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

the  living  God."  This  answer  Jesus  accepted. 
"  Blessed,"  he  said,  "  art  thou,  Simon,  son  of 
Jonah,  for  flesh  and  blood  hath  not  revealed  it 
unto  thee,  but  my  Father  which  is  in  Heaven.  And 
I  say  also  unto  thee  that  thou  art  a  rock,  and  upon 
this  rock  I  will  build  my  Israel,^  and  the  gates  of 
Death  shall  not  prevail  against  it." 

To  this  somewhat  enigmatic  utterance  three  dif- 
ferent interpretations  have  been  given.  Catholics 
have  said  that  Christ  founded  his  church,  upon 
Peter,  or  at  least  upon  the  Apostles,  and  that  to 
them  he  gave  supreme  authority  and  conferred  upon 
them  the  right  to  transmit  their  authority  to  others ; 
and  they  define  the  Church  of  Christ  as  a  body  of 
disciples  whose  leaders  have  received  this  apostolic 
ordination  transmitted  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion. The  difficulty  about  this  interpretation  is  that 
Christ  says  nothing  here  or  elsewhere  about  any 
successors  to  Peter  or  the  Apostles,  and  that  there 
is  no  indication  in  the  New  Testament  that  they 

1 "  If  we  may  venture  for  a  moment  to  substitute  the  phrase, 
Israel,  and  read  the  words  as  "  on  this  rock  I  will  build  my 
Israel "  we  gain  an  impression  which  supplies  at  least  an  ap- 
proximation to  the  probable  sense." — F.  J.  A.  Hort,  D.D., 
"  The  Christian  Ecclesia." 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION    35 

ever  exercised  the  authority  claimed  by  the  modern 
priesthood. 

Protestants  have  interpreted  Christ  as  meaning 
that  Peter's  confession  of  faith  in  Jesus  as  the 
Messiah  and  the  son  of  God  is  the  foundation  of 
the  Christian  Church,  and  that  any  church  which 
accepts  this  doctrine  is  sound  and  any  church  which 
repudiates  it  is  unsound.  The  foundation  then  is 
not  a  person  but  a  doctrine.  The  difficulty  about 
this  interpretation  is  that  it  does  not  interpret.  It 
rubs  off  the  slate  that  which  Christ  had  put  upon 
it  and  puts  something  else  in  its  place. 

The  third  interpretation  of  this  passage  is  that 
the  foundation  of  Christ's  church  is  not  Peter's 
doctrine  of  Christ,  nor  Peter  and  the  twelve  as 
officers  in  an  organization  not  yet  formed,  but  Peter 
as  a  type  of  humanity  transformed  by  the  inspira- 
tion which  he  had  received  from  a  year  of  intimate 
companionship  with  Jesus. 

Simon,  the  son  of  Jonah,  was  of  all  the  apostles 
the  one  who  had  the  least  stability  of  character.  He 
was  not  a  rock;  he  was  a  wave  of  the  sea.  It  was 
he  who  said,  "  Lord,  bid  me  come  out  to  thee  upon 
the  water,"  but  who,  making  the  venture  and  begin- 


36       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

ning  to  sink,  cried,  "Lord,  save  me."  It  was  he 
who  said,  "  I  will  never  deny  thee ;  I  am  ready  to 
go  with  thee  to  prison  and  to  death";  and  then 
rushed  into  the  Court  of  Caiaphas  with  audacity, 
only  to  deny  his  Master  with  oaths  at  the  first 
temptation.  It  was  he  who  was  the  first  to  preach 
the  Glad  Tidings  to  the  Gentiles  and  yet,  when  the 
hierarchy  came  from  Jerusalem,  was  frightened 
and  refused  even  to  eat  with  the  Gentiles.  To  this 
vacillating  man  Jesus  says,  "  I  will  make  a  rock 
of  you,  even  of  you."  If  he  could  make  a  rock  of 
Simon  —  and  Simon's  subsequent  life  shows  that 
Jesus  did  so  —  he  could  make  a  rock  of  any  one. 

.What  Christ  says  then  is,  not  I  will  build  my 
church  on  you  and  your  successors,  nor,  on  what 
you  have  said,  but,  on  you  as  a  man  transformed 
by  the  power  of  an  indwelling  Christ;  on  you  as  a 
type  of  a  long  line  of  humanity  changed  by  com- 
panionship with  me  through  the  coming  ages. 

This  is  the  interpretation  of  Christ's  saying 
afforded  by  its  setting.  This  is  also  Peter's  own 
interpretation.  Writing  years  after  to  his  contem- 
poraries, he  says. 

You  have  had  a  taste  of  the  kindness  of  the  Lord: 
come  to  him  then  —  come  to  that  living  Stone  which  men 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION         37 

have  rejected  and  God  holds  choice  and  precious,  come 
and,  like  living  stones  yourselves,  be  built  into  a  spiritual 
house,  to  form  a  consecrated  priesthood  for  the  offering 
of  those  spiritual  sacrifices  that  are  acceptable  to  God 
through  Jesus  Christ.^ 

This  is  a  very  mixed  metaphor,  but  these  apostles 
were  so  full  of  the  new  life  that  in  giving  expres- 
sion to  it  they  paid  little  attention  to  the  rules  of 
rhetoric.  In  Peter's  thought  the  Church  is  both  a 
living  church  and  a  stable  church,  a  progressive 
church  and  a  rocklike  church.  So  he  said,  It  is 
built  upon  living  stones  and  out  of  living  stones ; 
a  church  of  living  spirits  built  upon  a  living 
Christ. 

And  as  this  is  the  natural  interpretation  of  the 
text  and  the  interpretation  of  Peter  himself  so  it 
is  the  interpretation  given  to  it  by  history.  The 
great  leaders  of  the  church,  almost  without  excep- 
tion, have  been  men  transformed  by  their  spiritual 
experience  of  fellowship  wdth  a  companionable 
God: — John,  a  son  of  Thunder,  wishing  to  call 
down  fire  from  Heaven  on  the  Samaritan  village, 
and  a  self-seeker,  going  in  the  very  last  hours  of 
Jesus'  life  to  ask  of  him  the  first  office  in  his 
1  James  Moffat:  "Translation  of  New  Testament." 


38       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

kingdom,  but  transformed  into  the  beloved  disciple 
and  the  preacher  preeminent  for  his  message  of 
peace  and  love;  Paul,  a  Pharisee  of  the  Pharisees, 
transformed  into  the  eloquent  herald  of  the  glory 
of  the  liberty  of  the  children  of  God;  Augustine, 
transformed  from  a  roue  into  a  saintly  theologian; 
Luther,  called  from  the  monastery  to  become  the 
founder  of  Protestantism;  Wesley,  the  High 
Churchman,  made,  in  spite  of  himself,  the  founder 
of  a  great  free  church;  John  B.  Gough,  rescued 
from  a  drunkard's  fate  to  become  the  apostle  of 
temperance;  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  bred  in  the 
school  of  an  iron-clad  Puritanism  to  become  a 
leader  of  the  Puritan  churches  from  their  bondage 
unto  law  into  the  liberty  wherewith  Christ  makes 
free.  There  is  scarcely  in  all  the  history  of  the 
church  a  captain  of  its  industries  or  a  framer  of 
its  thought  or  an  inspirer  of  its  life  who  has  not 
known  the  transforming  power  that  was  shown  in 
Peter,  who  has  not  been  changed,  manifestly,  and 
before  the  eyes  of  all  mankind,  changed  that  he 
might  lead  others  into  a  larger  and  more  Christ- 
like life. 

This    interpretation    of    a    passage    confessedly 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION    39 

enigmatical  is  illustrated  and  further  confirmed  by 
one  of  Christ's  parables. 

As  he  approached  that  Valley  of  Death  which  each 
one  of  us  must  at  last  pass  through  alone,  he  had 
a  great  desire  for  one  hour  of  quiet  companionship 
with  his  friends.  From  one  of  his  secret  followers 
in  Jerusalem  he  borrowed  an  upper  chamber  that 
he  and  his  disciples  might,  as  a  family,  take  their 
last  meal  together  undisturbed.  He  made  one 
final  effort  to  recover  Judas  Iscariot  from  his  crime, 
but  in  vain,  and  unable  longer  to  endure  the  traitor's 
presence,  bade  him  go  and  fulfill  his  design.  Then 
with  characteristic  self-devotion  he  set  himself  to 
prepare  his  disciples  for  the  tragedy  of  the  morrow. 
He  told  them  that  he  was  about  to  die,  and  used 
his  unfailing  courage  to  impart  courage  to  them. 
You  will  leave  me,  he  said,  to  face  this  hour  alone; 
yet  I  shall  not  be  alone  for  the  Father  will  be  with 
me.  I  shall  seem  to  leave  you  alone;  yet  you  will 
not  be  alone,  for  the  Father  will  give  you  the 
strength-giving  spirit  he  has  given  to  me  and  that 
spirit  will  abide  with  you  forever.  You  will  not 
see  him  but  you  will  know  him  because  he  will  be 
in  you  as  he  has  been  in  me.     You  will  think  me 


40       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

dead;  but  I  shall  not  be  dead.  I  will  come  to  you 
and  you  will  share  my  imperishable  life  with  me. 
And  my  Father  will  come  and  we  will  dwell  with 
you  and  bring  peace  to  you.  And  then  he  gives  in 
a  simple  and  to  them  familiar  figure  his  interpre- 
tation of  the  Israel  of  the  future,  borrowing  the 
figure  from  the  Hebrew  Psalmists,  one  of  whom 
had,  in  the  exile,  sung  of  the  vine  which  Jehovah 
had  planted. 

Thou  broughtest  a  vine  out  of  Egypt: 
Thou  didst  drive  out  the  nations,  and  plantedst  it. 

Thou  preparedst  room  before  it, 
And  it  took  deep  root,  and  filled  the  land. 

The  mountains  were  covered  with  the  shadow  of  it, 
And  the  boughs  thereof  were  like  cedars  of  God. 

It  sent  out  its  branches  unto  the  sea, 
And  its  shoots  unto  the  River. 

Why  hast  thou  broken  down  its  walls, 
So  that  all  they  that  pass  by  the  way  do  pluck  it? 

The  boar  out  of  the  wood  doth  ravage  it, 
And  the  wild  beasts  of  the  field  feed  on  it. 

Turn  again,  we  beseech  thee,  O  God  of  hosts : 
Look  down  from  heaven  and  behold,  and  visit  this  vine. 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION    41 

To  this  cry  of  the  seemingly  deserted  Israel, 
Isaiah's  use  of  the  same  figure  furnishes  a  reply : 

Let  me  sing  for  my  well  beloved  a  song  of  my  beloved 
touching  his  vineyard.  My  well  beloved  had  a  vineyard 
in  a  very  fruitful  hill:  And  he  digged  it,  and  gathered 
out  the  stones  thereof,  and  planted  it  with  the  choicest 
vine,  and  built  a  tower  in  the  midst  of  it,  and  also  hewed 
out  a  winepress  therein:  and  he  looked  that  it  should 
bring  forth  grapes,  and  it  brought  forth  wild  grapes. 
And  now,  O  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  and  men  of  Judah, 
judge,  I  pray  you,  betwixt  me  and  my  vineyard.  What 
could  have  been  done  more  to  my  vineyard,  that  I  have 
not  done  in  it?  Wherefore,  when  I  looked  that  it  should 
bring  forth  grapes,  brought  it  forth  wild  grapes?.  And 
now  I  will  tell  you  what  I  will  do  to  my  vineyard :  I  will 
take  away  the  hedge  thereof,  and  it  shall  be  eaten  up; 
I  will  break  down  the  wall  thereof,  and  it  shall  be  trodden 
down:  and  I  will  lay  it  waste;  it  shall  not  be  pruned  nor 
hoed;  but  there  shall  come  up  briers  and  thorns:  I  will 
also  command  the  clouds  that  they  rain  no  rain  upon  it. 
For  the  vineyard  of  Jehovah  of  hosts  is  the  house  of 
Israel,  and  the  men  of  Judah  his  pleasant  plant:  and  he 
looked  for  justice,  but,  behold,  oppression;  for  righteous- 
ness, but,  behold,  a  cry. 

In  the  days  preceding  the  Last  Supper  Jesus  had 
recalled  to  the  multitudes  in  the  temple  this  ancient 
figure  and  had  compelled  from  the  people  their 
condemnation  of  the  rulers  of  Israel :     "  The  Lord 


42       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

of  the  Vineyard,"  they  had  said,  "will  destroy 
those  wicked  men  and  will  let  out  his  vineyard 
unto  other  husbandmen  who  will  render  him  the 
fruits  in  their  season."  And  Jesus  had  com- 
mended their  verdict:  "The  Kingdom  of  God," 
he  said,  "  shall  be  taken  from  you  and  given  to  a 
nation  bringing  forth  the  fruits  thereof."  Now, 
speaking  to  his  disciples  to  revive  their  hopes  and 
inspire  their  courage,  he  recalled  to  their  minds 
this  familiar  parable  of  the  vineyard,  and  gave  to 
it  a  prophetic  interpretation : 

I  am  the  true  vine.  My  Father  is  the  husbandman. 
Every  branch  in  me  that  beareth  not  fruit,  He  taketh 
away.  And  every  branch  that  beareth  fruit,  he  cleanseth 
it  that  it  may  bring  forth  more  fruit.  Already  ye  are 
clean  through  the  word  which  I  have  spoken  unto  you. 
Abide  in  me  and  I  in  you.  As  the  branch  cannot  bear 
fruit  of  itself  except  it  abide  in  the  vine,  no  more  can  ye 
except  ye  abide  in  me.  I  am  the  vine,  ye  are  the  branches. 
He  that  abideth  in  me  and  I  in  him,  the  same  bringeth 
forth  much  fruit.  Because  apart  from  me  ye  can  do 
nothing.  In  case  any  one  shall  not  have  abided  in  me  he 
has  been  cast  out  like  the  branch  that  is  withered,  and 
they  gather  them  together  and  they  are  burned.  If  ye 
abide  in  me  and  my  words  abide  in  you,  ye  shall  ask  what 
ye  will,  and  it  shall  be  done  unto  you.  Therein  is  my 
Father  glorified;  so  that  ye  shall  bear  much  fruit  and 
shall  become  my  disciples. 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION    43 

This  is  the  fullest  description  which  Jesus  has 
left  to  the  world  of  his  ideal  for  that  Brotherhood 
to  which  he  has  committed  the  cofnpletion  of  his 
commission.  The  members  have  organized  them- 
selves into  different  worshipping  congregations 
separated  by  the  variety  of  their  theological  opin- 
ions, expressed  in  creeds,  and  the  variety  of  their 
tastes  and  temperaments,  expressed  in  rituals. 
These  Christian  organizations  are  sometimes  treated 
in  religious  writing  as  though  they  were  one  and  are 
called  the  Church,  or  The  Holy  Catholic  Church; 
but  the  Christian  Brotherhood  out  of  which  they 
have  all  grown  is  more  than  the  Church  or  all  the 
Churches  combined.  It  is  founded  not  on  agree- 
ment in  opinion,  that  is  on  a  creed,  not  on  agree- 
ment in  forms  of  worship,  that  is  on  a  ritual,  not 
on  agreement  in  the  form  of  organization,  that  is 
neither  on  an  hereditary  priesthood  nor  on  a  demo- 
cratic congregation,  nor  even  on  love  for  a  sacred 
but  long  since  buried  Messiah ;  but  on  love  and  loy- 
alty to  a  living  Messiah,  forever  incarnate  in  the 
hearts  and  lives  of  his  disciples,  in  a  more  intimate 
companionship  and  with  a  far  wider  and  mightier 
influence  than  when  he  trod  the  earth  with  the  few 


44       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

score  of  faithful  friends  whom  he  gathered  about 
him.^ 

This  prophetic  parable  giving  Christ's  interpre- 
tation of  what  the  Christian  Brotherhood  should  be, 
interprets  and  is  interpreted  by  the  history  of  the 
Christianity.  The  little  seed  has  become  a  great 
tree.  The  little  band  of  twelve  has  grown  to  such 
proportion  that  it  is  counted  by  millions.  The 
Brotherhood  that  had  no  purse  nor  scrip,  nor  even 
so  much  as  two  changes  of  raiment  apiece  when 
they  went  forth  on  their  travels,  is  now  endowed 
with  a  wonderful  equipment.  There  are  no  ediifices 
in  the  world  more  splendid  than  some  of  the  edifices 
which  this  Brotherhood  has  constructed.  There  are 
no  schools  of  learning  better  than  those  which  this 
Brotherhood  has  endowed.  It  has  spread  over  the 
globe,  so  that  to-day  there  is  scarcely  any  language 
in  which  the  praise  of  their  Leader  is  not  sung; 
scarcely  any  community  in  which  his  word  is  not 
proclaimed;  scarcely  any  spot  where  men  do  not 

?•  For  the  sake  of  greater  clearness  I  will  in  this  chapter  use 
the  word  church  or  churches  to  indicate  the  visible  worship- 
ping congregations  with  their  creeds  and  rituals,  and  the  word 
Brotherhood  to  indicate  the  spiritual  and  invisible  fellowship 
out  of  which  all  the  churches  have  grown. 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION         45 

gather  to  honor  his  name,  and  to  strengthen  them- 
selves the  better  to  do  his  service.  The  influence 
from  this  band  overruns  its  boundaries.  Belief 
in  the  Leader,  belief  in  a  good  God  who  rules  the 
world,  is  no  longer  confined  to  the  professed  suc- 
cessors of  these  twelve.  It  is  difficult  to  tell  who 
are  within  the  Brotherhood  and  who  are  without 
it,  because  the  faith  of  the  Christian  church  has 
become  the  faith  of  the  Christian  community,  and 
the  principles  of  the  Christian  church  are,  in  some 
measure  at  least,  accepted  by  those  who  do  not 
profess  to  belong  to  it. 

It  is  true  that  the  prosperity  and  progress  of 
the  church  has  been  its  peril.  While  it  has 
been  pushing  its  influence  out  into  the  world,  the 
world  has  been  pushing  its  influence  into  the 
church.  Deeds  of  avarice  and  cruelty  have  been 
strangely  interwoven  in  the  fabric  of  its  his- 
tory with  deeds  of  unselfish  devotion  and  self- 
sacrificing  love.  It  has  been  both  narrow-minded 
and  large-hearted;  both  divided  into  petty  sects 
quarreling  over  forms  of  words  and  united  in  world- 
wide service  by  love  for  its  Master.  Whenever 
it  has  lost  that  love;  whenever  it  has  substituted 


46       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

an  admiration  of  beauty  for  a  reverence  of  good- 
ness, emotional  enjoyment  for  self-denying  service, 
regulation  of  conduct  for  inspiration  of  the  spirit, 
belief  in  a  creed  for  faith  in  a  Person,  v^hatever  its 
w^ealth,  its  political  power,  its  prestige,  whatever 
the  beauty  of  its  services,  the  regularity  of  its  order, 
or  the  soundness  of  its  theology,  it  has  ceased  to 
be  a  living  church,  and  has  had  pronounced  against 
it  the  condemnation  uttered  nineteen  centuries  ago 
against  its  prototype :  "  Thou  sayest,  I  am  rich, 
and  increased  with  goods,  and  have  need  of  nothing; 
and  knowest  not  that  thou  art  wretched,  and  miser- 
able, and  poor,  and  blind,  and  naked." 

Nevertheless,  no  organization  has  been  so  en- 
during, so  world-wide  in  its  influence,  so  beneficent 
in  its  service,  so  deathless  in  its  vitality  as  the 
Christian  church.  And  wherever  it  has  gone  it 
has  sown  the  seeds  out  of  which  have  grown  hos- 
pitals for  the  sick,  asylums  for  the  poor,  schools 
for  the  ignorant,  liberty  supplanting  despotism,  a 
reverence  of  love  supplanting  the  reverence  of  fear, 
and,  growing  clearer  with  the  passing  of  time, 
divine  ideals  of  courage,  chivalry,  charity  and 
brotherhood  unknown  before.     It  has  been  attacked 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION    47 

by  ruthless  persecution  from  without  and  by  feuds 
and  factions  not  less  ruthless  from  within.  Again 
and  again  its  usefulness  has  seemed  to  come  to  an 
end,  and  it  has  seemed  to  die  a  death  from  which 
there  could  be  no  resurrection;  again  and  again  it 
has  been  entombed,  the  rock  door  of  its  tomb  has 
been  sealed  and  its  enemies  have  declared  its  power 
ended;  and  again  and  again  it  has  risen  from  the 
dead,  cast  off  its  grave  clothes  and  entered  upon 
a  new  life. 

In  the  first  century  Nero  thought  that  he  had 
killed  the  infant  child,  and  three  centuries  later 
the  successor  of  Nero  proclaimed  Rome  a  Chris- 
tian empire.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  Christian 
Church  had  adopted  not  only  the  outer  form  but 
the  persecuting  spirit  of  pagan  Rome,  and  the  splen- 
did cathedrals  became  its  tomb  and  the  jeweled 
robes  of  its  priests  became  its  grave  clothes;  yet 
all  the  while  its  deathless  life  inspired  the  Preach- 
ing Friars  laying  in  England  the  foundations  of 
England's  future  liberty,  and  the  self  denying 
sisters  of  mercy  and  charity  precursors  of  the  Red 
Cross  of  the  then  distant  future.  In  the  eighteenth 
century   the   Protestant    Church    seemed    dead   in 


48       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

England.  The  Cross  was  on  the  spires  of  the 
cathedral  but  not  in  the  lives  of  the  clergy;  the 
preaching  was  an  ethic  as  uninspiring  as  that  of 
Confucius;  the  religion  of  Dean  Swift  was  no  more 
Christian  than  the  infidelity  of  Bolingbroke;  the 
most  famous  moral  teacher  of  his  time,  Archdeacon 
Paley,  defined  virtue  as  "  doing  good  to  mankind 
in  obedience  to  the  will  of  God  and  for  the  sake 
of  everlasting  happiness."  And  yet  out  of  this 
decadent  church  issued  the  enthusiasm  of  Wesley- 
anism  in  England  and  of  Moravianism  on  the 
Continent.  The  nineteenth  century  saw  dogmatism 
within  the  church  and  agnosticism  without  uncon- 
sciously joining  their  forces  to  destroy  the  church 
which  was  the  only  confessed  defender  of  the  truth 
and  of  the  vitality  of  spiritual  experience,  and  the 
century  was  called  by  friend  and  foe  alike  the  "  age 
of  skepticism."  And  yet  it  is  in  this  age  of  skep- 
ticism that  the  Christian  church  has  given  birth 
to  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  the 
Young  Women's  Christian  Association,  the  Salva- 
tion Army  and  the  Red  Cross,  and  their  work  has 
furnished  the  most  luminous  illustration  the  world 
has  ever  seen  of  the  spirit  of  him  who  laid  down 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION        49 

his  life  for  us  that  we  might  lay  down  our  lives 
for  the  brethren. 

Jesus  told  his  disciples  that,   "Where  two  or 
three  are  gathered  together  in  my  name  there  am  I 
in  the  midst  of  them."     Whenever  two  or  three 
are  gathered  together  united  by  their  love  and  loy- 
alty to  Jesus  Christ  as  their  Master  and  by  their 
common  purpose  to  carry  on  the  work  which  he  has 
left  his  followers  to  do,  he  is  their  comrade,  and 
their  organization  is  a  part  of  his  great  Congrega- 
tion, a  branch  of  the  vine  of  which  he  is  the  life. 
The  church,  as  he  defined  it,  is  much  more  than 
a  body  of  Christian  disciples  possessing  the  same  or 
similar  beliefs,  rituals,  and  form  of  organization, 
as  the  Roman  Catholic,  the  Episcopal,  the  Presby- 
terian or  the  Congregational  church;  it  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  visible  and  organic  body   of 
believers  united  by  their  acceptance  of  the  creeds 
and  some  of  the   forms  of  worship  of  primitive 
times.     The  church,  as  Christ  defined  it,  is  the  entire 
body  of  all  those  who  are  Christ's  comrades  in  the 
work  which  he  is  carrying  on  in  the  world,  united 
by  their  fellowship  with  one  another  and  their  faith 
in  him. 


so       WHAT  GHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Christianity  is  more  than  the  institutions  of 
'Christianity.  An  institution  is  but  a  corpse  if  it 
does  not  embody  a  living  spirit;  form  without 
spirit  is  always  lifeless;  language  is  but  idle  words 
if  it  is  not  a  vehicle  for  thought  or  feeling;  the 
kiss  may  be  a  symbol  of  treason  as  well  as  of 
loyalty;  the  palace  without  love  is  a  hovel,  the  hut 
which  enshrines  love  is  a  home.  But  it  is  also 
true  that  spirit  without  body  is  almost  as  useless. 
Love  in  the  heart  inspires  no  one  if  it  is  not  ex- 
pressed; unexpressed  thoughts  are  of  little  service 
to  him  who  possesses  them  and  of  no  service  to 
others.  The  Declaration  of  Independence  would 
have  been  of  no  value  if  there  had  not  been  men 
willing  to  fight  for  it  and  die  for  it.  Christianity 
is  the  spirit  of  Christ;  the  Christian  Church  is  its 
imperfect  embodiment.  The  institutions  of  religion 
are  not  religion;  but  religion  would  be  almost 
wholly  ineffective  if  it  were  not  for  its  institutions. 

The  work  of  the  Christian  Brotherhood  is  not 
ended  and  will  not  be  ended  so  long  as  there  is 
wickedness  to  be  fought  and  human  need  to  be 
helped.  And  never  before  was  this  Brotherhood 
more  Christian  in  its  essential  spirit  than  it  is  to- 


THE  CHURCH'S  ONE  FOUNDATION         51 

day.  Are  there  hungry  men?  By  this  Brother- 
hood charity  ministers  to  them?  Are  there  sick? 
By  this  Brotherhood  hospitals  are  built.  Are  there 
insane?  This  Brotherhood  has  taught  men  that  in- 
sanity is  not  a  crime.  Are  there  criminals?  This 
Brotherhood  has  taught  that  crime  is  a  disease 
and  the  criminal  is  to  be  cured  while  he  is  pun- 
ished. In  many  a  distant  village  or  remote  prairie 
at  home,  in  crowded  cities  and  in  scattered  popula- 
tions in  foreign  lands,  men  inspired  by  this  hope, 
animated  by  this  purpose,  and  following  their 
Leader,  are  attempting  to  bring  about  the  Kingdom 
of  God  upon  the  earth,  giving  themselves  to  an 
unrewarded  ministry,  and  accepting  the  opportu- 
nity for  service  as  itself  the  best  of  all  rewards. 

What  is  the  condition  of  belonging  to  this  age- 
long and  world-wide  Brotherhood  united  solely  by 
that  love  which  is  the  bond  of  perfectness,  Christ 
has  made  clear :  "  Ye  are  my  friends,"  he  said,  "  if 
ye  do  what  I  have  commanded  you."  Obedience  to 
Christ's  commands  is  the  only  condition  which  Christ 
has  prescribed  for  membership  in  the  Christian 
Brotherhood.  What  are  his  commands  I  ask  my 
reader  to  consider  in  the  chapters  which  follow. 


CHAPTER  IV 

I  AM  COME  TO  PREACH  GLAD  TIDINGS  TO  THE  POOR 

Jesus  in  a  single  sentence  has  defined  the  mission 
of  his  followers:  "As  the  Father  hath  sent  me, 
even  so  send  I  you."  He  calls  on  his  followers  to 
carry  on  in  successive  generations,  with  his  com- 
panionship and  under  his  personal  but  invisible 
leadership,  the  work  he  was  commissioned  by  his 
Father  to  do.  What  that  work  is  he  at  different 
times  and  in  different  language  has  explicitly  stated. 

'The  earliest  of  these  statements  is  contained  in 
his  first  reported  sermon  preached  in  the  synagogue 
at  Nazareth,  in  which  he  declared  that  he  had  come 
to  fulfill  the  prophecies  in  the  Old  Testament  of  a 
kingdom  of  God  on  the  earth,  and  that  a  distin- 
guished feature  of  that  kingdom  would  be  a  new 
spirit  of  philanthropy. 

He  came  to  Nazareth  where  he  had  been  brought  up: 
and  as  his  oustom  was,  he  went  into  the  synagogue  on  the 

52 


GLAD  TIDINGS  TO  THE  POOR  53 

Sabbath  day,  and  stood  up  for  to  read.  And  there  was 
deUvered  unto  him  the  book  of  the  prophet  Isaiah.  And 
when  he  had  opened  the  book,  he  found  the  place  where 
it  was  written,  The  spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because 
he  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  glad-tidings  to  the  poor ;  he 
hath  sent  me  to  heal  the  brokenhearted,  to  preach  deliver- 
ance to  the  captives,  and  recovering  of  sight  to  the  blind, 
to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised,  to  preach  the 
acceptable  year  of  the  Lord.  ,  .  .  And  he  began  to  say 
unto  them,  This  day  is  this  scripture  fulfilled  in  your  ears. 

Both  the  teaching  and  the  practice  of  Jesus 
interpret  this  definition  of  his  mission.  His  religion 
was  a  rehgion  of  humanity.  He  came  to  give  a 
new  creative  impulse  to  benevolence  and  so  a  new 
meaning  to  human  life.  He  put  the  heretical  but 
humane  Samaritan  above  the  callous  priest  and 
Levite.  He  pictured  life  as  an  estate  left  by  an 
absentee  landlord  in  the  care  of  a  steward  who 
would  be  tested  by  his  treatment  of  the  tenants. 
The  nations  accounted  those  great  who  wrung 
service  from  their  inferiors;  Christ  accounted  those 
great  who  rendered  service  to  others.  He  esteemed 
no  acts  of  genuine  good-will  insignificant.  Two 
farthings  in  a  contribution  box  or  a  cup  of  cold 
water  to  a  thirsty  pilgrim,  if  the  gift  of  a  generous 
spirit,  he  accounted  an  act  of  religion.     To  the  men 


54       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

and  women  whom  society,  then  as  now,  regarded 
as  outcast  sinners  he  brought  promise  of  pardon 
and  hope  of  a  new  Hfe.  But  the  man  who  devoted 
himself  to  accumulating  and  investing  wealth  he 
called  a  fool ;  and  he  declared  that  hell  would  be  the 
doom  of  the  rich  man  who  feasted  sumptuously 
every  day  and  left  the  beggar  at  his  door  uncared 
for,  and  of  the  Pharisee  who  devoured  widows' 
houses  and  for  a  pretense  made  long  prayers.  In 
the  only  description  of  the  last  judgment  which  he 
ever  gave,  he  declared  that  the  Judge  would  measure 
men,  not  by  their  creeds,  their  church  attendance, 
or  their  scrupulous  observance  of  prescribed  rituals 
and  ordinances,  but  by  their  treatment  of  their 
fellow-men.  The  fact  that  they  had  never  known 
him  and  were  not  conscious  that  they  had  rendered 
him  any  service  would  not  condemn  them.  The 
fact  that  they  had  known  him  and  confessed  him  as 
their  Lord  would  not  save  them  from  condemna- 
tion. 

His  life  illustrated  his  teachings.  He  gave  him- 
self with  utter  abandon  to  the  service  of  others. 
Were  they  hungry,  he  fed  them;  sick,  he  healed 
them;  crazy,  he  restored  to  them  their  recovered 


GLAD  TIDINGS  TO  THE  POOR  55 

minds;  ignorant,  he  taught  them;  in  despair,  he 
brought  them  hope;  isolated  from  their  fellow  men 
by  their  pride,  he  pierced  the  walls  of  their  prison 
house  with  sharp  invective.  No  service  was  so 
lowly  that  he  was  unwilling  to  render  it.  Once 
his  disciples  who  had  been  out  all  night  fishing  and 
were  disheartened  by  their  failure,  when  they  came 
on  shore  found  that  he  had  cooked  their  breakfast 
for  them.  Once  they  had  walked  the  dusty  streets 
of  Jerusalem  with  sandaled  but  unstockinged  feet, 
and  had  hotly  contested  their  respective  rights  to 
places  of  preeminence  at  the  supper  table.  He 
waited  till  they  had  settled  this  important  problem, 
then  he  girded  himself  with  a  towel  as  their 
servant  and  washed  their  feet  himself.  Finally,  he 
freely  offered  up  his  life  for  enemies  who  hated 
him  and  for  companions  of  whom  one  betrayed 
him,  one  denied  him,  and  the  rest,  with  one  excep- 
tion, abandoned  him. 

Nor  was  it  merely  the  unhappy  condition  of  the 
common  people  which  moved  his  sympathy.  At 
the  very  outset  of  his  ministry  he  perceived  clearly 
that  the  secret  of  the  highest  happiness  and  of  the 
most  poignant  sorrow  is  in  the  spirit  of  man;  in 


56       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

his  character,  not  in  his  condition ;  in  what  he  is,  not 
in  where  he  is.  He  saw  clearly  that  he  could  not 
fulfill  his  mission  by  merely  feeding  the  hungry. 
Even  if  he  turned  the  stones  into  bread  the  relief 
would  be  but  slight  and  temporary.  Heart  hunger 
is  more  difficult  to  bear  than  bodily  hunger.  The 
blessed  are  not  the  rich  but  the  lowly  in  spirit;  not 
the  sorrowless  but  those  who  are  strengthened  by 
their  sorrows;  not  the  grasping  who  acquire  much, 
but  the  unselfish  who  inherit  from  their  Heavenly 
Father  what  he  chooses  to  bestow  upon  them.  Alas 
for  you  rich!  he  cries,  for  you  have  received  your 
consolation.  Alas  for  you  that  are  full!  for  you 
shall  hunger.  Alas  for  you  laughing  ones !  for  you 
shall  mourn.  Alas  for  you  of  whom  all  men  shall 
speak  well  I  for  so  did  their  fathers  of  the  false 
prophets.  These  four  types  of  men  whom  we  are 
apt  to  envy, —  the  rich,  the  full,  the  merry  at;d  the 
popular  —  Christ  pities.  The  rich,  not  because  he 
is  rich,  but  because  he  has  gotten  that  for  which  he 
has  been  striving;  the  satisfied  because  he  has  no 
aspirations;  the  laughing  ones  because- life  is  serious 
and  they  never  take  life  seriously;  the  man  whom 
all  men  praise  because  all  men  never  praise  the  man 


GLAD  TIDINGS  TO  THE  POOR  57 

who  with  courage  and  real  power  is  making  the 
world  better  than  it  has  been. 

Jesus  looked  upon  the  crowds  of  ignorant  men 
and  women  with  compassion;  not  chiefly  because 
they  were  poor,  oppressed  or  hungry,  but  because 
they  were  a  prey  to  demagogues,  ill  led  and  unpro- 
tected, like  sheep  without  a  shepherd.  Neither  their 
ignorance,  their  weakness  nor  their  sins  alienated 
him.  Sin  he  counted  a  disease ;  an  insane  conscience 
was  to  him  like  an  insane  mind.  The  Son  of  Man 
he  said  has  come  to  seek  and  to  save  the  lost  —  to 
seek  not  merely  to  save  those  that  sought  him,  to 
call  to  repentance,  not  merely  to  answer  the  repen- 
tant when  they  called.  And  in  these  sayings  as  we 
shall  see  more  fully  later,  he  was  interpreting  the 
spirit  of  his  Father. 

Animated  by  this  spirit,  Jesus  not  only  preached 
in  the  open  fields  and  in  private  houses  wherever 
he  could  find  an  audience,  but  he  visited  in  the 
homes  of  the  despised  tax  gatherers  and  the  out- 
cast sinners  and  sat  at  the  table  with  them.  The 
Pharisees  called  him  the  friend  of  publicans  and  sin- 
ners, in  which  saying  they  unwittingly  told  the  truth ; 
and  a  glutton  and  a  wine  bibber  in  which  they  con- 


S8      WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

sciously  lied.  And  yet,  did  they  lie?  Or  were 
they  simply  unable  to  conceive  why  any  one  should 
attend  a  feast  of  publicans  and  sinners  unless  he  was 
attracted  by  the  chance  to  eat  and  drink  without  re- 
straint? Even  in  his  indignation  against  pride  and 
false  pretense  Jesus  was  pitiful.  By  his  public  in- 
vective against  the  men  who  devoured  widows' 
houses  and  for  a  pretense  made  long  prayers,  he 
endeavored  to  pierce  the  fortress  which  their  pride 
had  erected  and  he  ended  his  invective  with  a  cry  of 
lamentation :  "  How  can  ye  escape  the  damnation 
of  hell?" 

No  one  will  claim  that  benevolence  was  born  in 
the  first  century.  Pity  for  the  suffering,  mercy  for 
the  wrong-doer  existed  in  the  world  before  Christ. 
But  in  his  birth  they  were  reborn.  From  being  an 
incident,  the  service  of  the  needy  gradually  became, 
wherever  the  influence  of  Jesus  Christ  went,  one 
of  the  great  objects  of  life.  Mr.  Lecky  in  his 
"  History  of  European  Morals  "  has  eloquently  con- 
trasted pagan  and  Christian  philanthropy,  from 
which  volume  I  quote  the  following  sentences.: 

The   greatest  things  are  often  those  which  are  most 
imperfectly  reahzed;  and  surely  no  achievements  of  the 


GLAD  TIDINGS  TO  THE  POOR  59 

Christian  Church  are  more  truly  great  than  those  which 
it  has  effected  in  the  sphere  of  charity.  For  the  first 
time  in  the  history  of  mankind,  it  has  inspired  many 
thousands  of  men  and  women,  at  the  sacrifice  of  all 
worldly  interests,  and  often  under  circumstances  of  ex- 
treme discomfort  or  danger,  to  devote  their  entire  lives 
to  the  single  object  of  assuaging  the  sufferings  of  human- 
ity. It  has  covered  the  globe  with  countless  institutions 
of  mercy,  absolutely  unknown  to  the  whole  pagan  world. 
It  has  indissolubly  united,  in  the  minds  of  men  the  idea 
of  supreme  goodness  with  that  of  active  and  constant 
benevolence.  It  has  placed  in  every  parish  a  religious 
minister  who,  whatever  may  be  his  other  functions,  has  at 
least  been  ofiicially  charged  with  the  superintendence  of  an 
organization  of  charity,  and  who  finds  in  this  office  one  of 
the  most  important  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  legitimate 
sources  of  his  power. 

But  the  skeptic  need  not  go  back  to  the  past  for 
an  illustration  of  the  power  of  Christ  to  awaken  in 
human  souls  "  The  Enthusiasm  of  Humanity." 
Christ  declared  one  object  of  his  mission  to  be  "  to 
set  at  Hberty  them  that  are  bruised."  A  great  na- 
tion inspired  by  the  spirit  of  service  has  given  its 
money,  its  food,  its  sons  and  daughters,  to  set  at 
liberty  a  people  whO'  were  being  cruelly  bruised  by 
oppression.  The  fact  that  Catholics,  Protestants, 
Jews  and  agnostics  have  all  united  in  this  service 
gives  evidence  that  the  Christian  spirit  has  over- 


6o       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

flowed  all  the  bounds  set  by  creeds,  rituals,  church 
ordinances,  and  church  organizations. 

Nor  is  this  a  mere  transient  enthusiasm  produced 
by  the  war.  It  has  been  intensified  by  the  demands 
of  sorrow  and  suffering  brought  to  our  conscious- 
ness by  the  war,  but  it  existed  before  the  war  broke 
upon  us  with  its  sad  surprise  and  it  continues  after 
the  war,  though  the  cannon  have  ceased  their  clam- 
orous demands.  There  never  was  a  time  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  when  so  many  men  and  women 
were  engaged  in  varied  endeavors  to  relieve  and 
succor  their  suffering  fellow-men.  Look  once  more 
at  these  words  of  Jesus  defining  his  mission  and 
compare  with  them  what  men  and  women  of  our 
time,  of  every  sect  and  of  none  at  all,  are  doing 
to  fulfill  that  mission,  often  with  no  consciousness 
that  it  is  a  Christian  niission  which  they  are  ful- 
filling and  that  the  spirit  which  inspires  them  came 
from  the  Man  of  Nazareth. 

It  is  this  Christ  spirit  which  inspires  the  move- 
ment throughout  Christendom  not  merely  to  amelio- 
rate the  sufferings  of  the  poor  but  to  abolish  poverty. 
The  social  reformers  of  our  time  are  not  always 
wise  in  their  methods  nor  Christ-like  in  their  spirit. 


GLAD  TIDINGS  TO  THE  POOR  6i 

Too  often  social  reform  has  been  marred  by  class 
envy,  jealousy  and  greed.  Nevertheless  the  Christ 
spirit  has  animated  many  single-taxers  who  have 
attributed  all  poverty  to  the  private  ov^nership  of 
land,  many  socialists  who  have  attributed  it  to  a 
false  organization  of  productive  industry,  and  some 
political  teachers  who  have  endeavored  to  inspire 
their  scholars  with  the  ambition  to  cure  poverty  by 
bringing  about  a  better  distribution  of  wealth. 

It  is  this  Christ  spirit  which  has  inspired  society 
with  the  endeavor  to  discover  some  form  of  help 
for  every  form  of  physical  handicap, —  limbs  for 
the  lame,  eyes  for  the  blind,  hospitals  for  the  sick, 
institutions  for  the  defective  and  the  insane. 

It  is  this  Christ  spirit  which  marvellously  ani- 
mating at  the  same  time  Russia,  England  and 
America,  abolished  in  the  last  century  serfdom  from 
Russia  and  .slavery  from  the  West  Indies  and  the 
United  States. 

It  is  this  Christ  spirit  which  has  inspired  what  is 
inadequately  termed  prison  reform,  but  what  is 
nothing  less  than  an  endeavor  to  provide  a  cure  for 
crime,  not  merely  a  punishment,  to  fit  punisliment 
to  the  criminal  rather  than  to  the  crime  and  so  make 


62       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

the  object  of  criminal  law  the  protection  of  the 
community  and  the  cure,  of  crime,  not  the  gratifi- 
cation of  revenge. 

It  is  this  Christ  spirit,  seeking  by  a  common 
efifort  to  save  society  from  the  ignorance  which 
imperils  it,  which  has  created  and  maintains  the 
public  school ;  has  established  social  settlements ;  has 
inspired  the  better  forms  of  socialism;  and  has  sent 
thousands  of  Christian  teachers,  doctors  and 
preachers  to  carry  into  foreign  lands  and  into  the 
poorer  portions  of  our  own  land,  the  message  of 
Christ's  sermon  at  Nazareth. 

When  Jesus  breathed  upon  his  disciples  and  said 
''  Receive  ye  the  Holy  Spirit,"  he  did  but  symbolize 
that  inspiration  which,  by  his  teaching,  his  life,  and 
his  unseen  but  not  unrealized  companionship,  he 
has  been  giving  throughout  the  centuries  in  his  loyal 
friends  and  followers,  and  what  he  then  said  to 
the  eleven,  he  has  been  saying  to  all  who  love  him 
and  love  the  truth  and  life  which  he  has  exempli- 
fied :  '*  As  the  Father  hath  sent  me  into  the  world, 
even  so  send  I  you  into  the  world."  They  who 
have  a(;cepted  this  commission,  though  they  never 
knew  who  gave  it  to  them,  they  who  have  accepted 


GLAD  TIDINGS  TO  THE  POOR  63 

this  spirit  of  love,  service  and  sacrifice,  though  they 
knew  not  whence  it  came,  are  his  followers.  There 
have  been  in  the  church  many  an  ambitious  Caiphas 
and  many  a  greedy  Judas  who  were  none  of  his; 
and  there  have  been  without  the  church  many  a 
repentant  and  generous  Zaccheus  who  have  made 
him  their  guest  without  knowing  whom  they  enter- 
tained, and  many  an  heretical  Good  Samaritan  who 
has  manifested  by  his  life  the  spirit  of  Jesus  though 
he  worshiped  not  in  Jerusalem. 

These  works  of  charity  have  not  been  prescribed 
by  rule  or  required  by  law.  They  have  been  a 
spontaneous  activity  of  an  inward  spirit.  They 
are  an  evident  fulfillment  of  Christ's  second  defini- 
tion of  his  mission.  To  that  definition  I  next 
direct  the  reader's  attention. 


CHAPTER  V 

I  AM   COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE 

As  FAR  back  as  I  can  remember  I  always  wished 
to  be  a  Christian.  But  I  curiously  failed  to  under- 
stand what  the  Christian  life  is.  I  thought  to  be  a 
Christian  meant  to  live  in  obedience  to  the  laws  of 
God.  But  when  I  compared  my  life  with  the  laws 
of  God  as  embodied  in  the  Ten  Commandments 
and  said  to  myself  what  the  rich  young  ruler  said 
to  Jesus,  "  All  these  things  have  I  kept  from  my 
youth  up,"  I  had  to  add  this  question,  "  What  lack 
I  yet?"  From  that  feeling  of  lack  I  could  never 
escape.  In  fact  without  knowing  it,  I  was  a  Jew, 
not  a  Christian.  Perhaps  I  should  say  a  Christian 
Jew.  For  I  found  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  as, 
for  example,  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  a  higher 
standard  of  character  than  in  the  Ten  Command- 
ments. As  I  studied  not  only  his  teachings  but  his 
life,  the  desire  to  be  like  him  increased,  but  the 
difficulty   of   conforming   my   life   to   this   higher 

64 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  65 

standard  also  increased.  As  I  look  back  upon  that 
epoch  in  my  life,  it  appears  to  me  that  I  was  like 
a  pupil  in  a  sculptor's  studio.  There  was  before 
me  the  work  of  a  master.  I  imagined  that  I  was 
plastic  clay  and  had  to  model  myself  into  a  copy 
of  the  orignial.  But  I  found  that  I  was  not  plastic 
clay,  and  however  conscientiously  I  tried  to  repro- 
duce the  original,  I  always  failed. 

It  was  not  until  at  about  eighteen  years  of  age  I 
came  under  the  influence  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher's 
preaching  that  I  began  to  understand  that  Jesus 
Christ  is  not  a  lawgiver  but  a  Hfegiver,  and  that 
one  is  not  a  Christian  because  he  obeys  the  laws  of 
God,  but  he  obeys  the  laws  of  God  because  he  is  a 
Christian.  This  change  in  my  conception  of  the 
Christian  life  was  gradual.  I  cannot  recollect  how 
and  when  it  began,  though  curiously  I  can  recollect 
some  apparently  insignificant  incidents  which  con- 
tributed to  it.  One  was  a  little  booklet  by  Dr. 
Mahan  entitled,  if  I  remember  aright,  "  The  Fox- 
Hunter,"  based  on  the  verse  in  the  Song  of  Songs : 
"  Take  us  the  foxes,  the  little  foxes  that  spoil  the 
vines."  Another  influence  was  a  sentence  picked 
up  somewhere  in  my  reading,  attributed  to  Augus- 


66      WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

tine :  "  Please  to  do  right ;  then  do  as  you  please." 
But  the  sentence  which  most  clearly  gave  to  me  the 
clew  to  the  true  interpretation  of  the  Gospel  as  inter- 
preted by  Jesus  Christ  in  his  teaching  and  by  Paul 
in  his  Epistles,  is  the  second  definition  which  Jesus 
Christ  gave  of  his  mission :  "  The  thief  cometh 
not  but  for  to  steal  and  to  kill  and  to  destroy ;  I  am 
come  that  they  might  have  life  and  that  they  might 
have  it  more  abundantly." 

Religion  has  often,  I  think  has  generally,  been  a 
restraint,  a  hindrance,  a  prohibition  upon  life. 
Such  was  the  religion  of  the  Pharisees  in  the  First 
Century,  of  the  ascetics  in  the  Middle  Ages,  of  the 
Puritans  in  the  Seventeenth  Century.  That  notion 
of  religion  Jesus  repudiated.  Whatever  lowers 
vitality,  lessens  life,  narrows  it,  impoverishes  it, 
by  whatever  name  it  is  called,  whatever  authority 
commands  it,  is  anti-Christian.  Christ  declared 
his  mission  to  be  to  develop  life,  enlarge  its  sphere, 
increase  its  activities,  ennoble  its  character.  The 
life  which  he  comes  to  impart  transcends  all  defini- 
tions. Paul  is  not  speaking  of  a  future  heaven  but 
of  a  present  Christian  experience  when  he  says: 
"  Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  have 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  67 

entered  into  the  heart  of  man,  the  things  which 
God  hath  prepared  for  them  that  love  him."  Not 
because  it  is  a  perfect  definition,  but  because  it  is 
the  last  I  have  happened  to  light  upon  in  my  reading 
and  is  wholly  free  from  theological  phraseology,  I 
quote  the  following  sentence  from  the  Journal  of 
Henri  Frederic  Amiel: 

As  I  understand  it,  Christianity  is  above  all  religious, 
and  religion  is  not  a  method,  it  is  a  life,  a  higher  and 
supernatural  life,  mystical  in  its  root  and  practical  in  its 
fruits,  a  communion  with  God,  a  calm  and  deep  enthusi- 
asm, a  love  which  radiates,  a  force  which  acts,  a  happiness 
which  overflows.  Religion,  in  short,  is  a  state  of  the 
soul. 

The  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  is  a  religion  of 
liberty,  not  of  law;  of  affirmations  and  inspirations, 
not  of  negations  and  prohibitions.  For  "  Thou 
shalt  not  "  Christ  substitutes  "  Thou  canst."  Thus 
his  Gospel  is  called  the  "  power  of  God  "  because 
he  inspires  us  to  believe  that  in  companionship  with 
God  we  can  accept  our  aspirations  as  divine  guides 
and  can  hope  that  our  ideals  can  in  time  be  by  us 
realized.  Judaism  said  "  No  idols  "  ;  Christ  says, 
**  God  is  spirit;  worship  him  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 


68       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Judaism  said  "  Thou  shalt  not  steal "  ;  Christ  says 
"  Give  to  him  that  asketh  of  thee,"  Judaism  said, 
inflict  on  the  wrongdoer  no  greater  injury  than  he 
has  inflicted  on  the  wronged  — "  An  eye  for  an  eye, 
a  tooth  for  a  tooth  "  ;  Jesus  says,  resist  not  the 
wrong;  overcome  his  evil  by  your  good. 

To  interpret  these  as  commands  is  wholly  to 
mistake  their  meaning.  They  are  inspirations. 
The  laws  of  Christ  are  not  commands  imposed  from 
without,  exacting  obedience;  they  are  interpreta- 
tions of  an  inward  life,  endowments  with  a  God- 
like power,  promises  of  a  divine  perfection.  Their 
meaning  is  made  clear  by  the  conclusion  to  which 
they  lead:  Ye  may  be  the  children  of  your  Fa- 
ther who  is  in  heaven;  ye  can  become  perfect 
even  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  which  has  been  so  often 
misinterpreted  as  analogous  to  the  Ten  Command- 
ments, only  more  spiritual,  contains  the  promise 
of  divine  life  as  a  free  gift  from  the  Father  to  all 
who  seek  it:  "If  ye  then,  being  evil,  know  how 
to  give  good  gifts  unto  your  children,  how  much 
more  shall  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  give  the 
spirit  of  holiness  to  them  that  ask  him?" 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  69 

It  is  extraordinary  to  what  extent  the  law  of 
taboo  has  found  its  way  into  the  teaching  of  the 
church  despite  the  teaching  of  its  Master.  The 
church  has  prohibited  dancing;  Christ  never  refers 
to  dancing  except  with  imphed  approval.  The 
church  has  urged  fasting  and  discouraged  feasting; 
Christ  did  not  fast  and  never  declined  an  invita- 
tion to  a  festivity.  The  church  has  frowned  upon 
fiction;  Christ  was  a  past-master  in  the  art  of  story- 
telling. The  church  has  prohibited  thinking; 
Christ  habitually  provoked  men  to  think  for  them- 
selves, sometimes  by  calling  on  the  questioner  to 
answer  his  own  question :  "  Who,  thinkest  thou, 
was  neighbor  unto  him  that  fell  among  the  thieves?  " 
Sometimes  by  putting  questions  to  his  congregation 
and  inviting  their  answer:  "What  think  ye  of 
Christ  ?     Whose  son  is  he  ?  " 

The  church  has  often  prescribed  rules  for  the 
regulation  of  conduct.  Jesus  Christ  prescribed  no 
rules;  he  inculcated  principles;  and  he  inspired  his 
disciples  with  a  new  spirit  of  life.  Rules  are  tem- 
porary ;  principles  are  permanent ;  and  the  spirit  of 
faith  and  hope  and  love  is  eternal.  It  knows  no 
limitations  of  time  or  space.     The  minister  is  con- 


70       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

tinually  asked  to-day  "  Where  shall  I  draw  the 
line?"  The  answer  of  Jesus  Christ  would  be 
"  There  are  no  lines."  He  would  not  teach  that 
knocking  balls  around  a  green  lawn  is  right  be- 
cause that  is  croquet  and  knocking  balls  around  a 
green  table  is  wrong  because  that  is  billiards.  He 
would  not  teach  that  cards  are  right  if  you  have 
historical  names  on  them  and  wrong  if  you  have 
spades  and  hearts  on  them.  He  would  not  teach 
that  it  is  right  to  have  a  tableau  or  a  charade  in  a 
church  sociable  and  Vi^rong  to  see  a  play  given  by 
professionals  in  a  theater.  He  would  not  teach 
that  it  is  wrong  to  wear  precious  jewels  and  right 
to  wear  precious  flowers.  He  would  teach  this: 
No  enjoyment  is  right  that  does  not  help  to  develop 
manhood  and  womanhood;  and  no  enjoyment  is 
wrong  that  does  help  to  develop  manhood  and 
womanhood.  What  is  luxury?  A  comfort  that 
enervates.  What  is  comfort?  A  luxury  that  does 
not  enervate.  The  life  is  more  than  meat;  the  body 
is  more  than  raiment.  Personality  is  more  than 
things.  All  things  are  right  which  contribute  to 
character;  all  things  are  wrong  which  deteriorate 
character. 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  71 

But  Christ  not  only  inspired  this  life  by  his 
teaching,  it  radiated  from  his  person. 

There  is  power  in  law  enforced  by  police.  There 
is  greater  power  in  truth  which  fits  the  door  of  the 
mind  as  the  key  fits  the  lock  and  gains  entrance  to 
the  fast  locked  soul.  There  is  still  greater  power 
in  example,  which  is  truth  expressed  by  action.  But 
the  greatest  power  of  all  is  that  of  a  great  per- 
sonality. Psychology  has  never  disclosed  its  secret 
or  explained  the  nature  of  its  operation.  No  edu- 
cator can  impart  it.  It  is  not  inherited;  its  pos- 
sessor cannot  bequeath  it  to  his  children.  It  made 
Thomas  Arnold  a  great  teacher,  Robert  E.  Lee  a 
great  general,  Abraham  Lincoln  a  great  leader, 
Phillips  Brooks  a  great  preacher.  It  is  not  con- 
sciously put  forth;  it  insensibly  emanates.  I  once 
knew  a  woman  on  whose  gravestone  might  well  be 
inscribed  the  text  "  Blessed  are  the  peace-makers," 
I  do  not  know  that  she  ever  intermeddled  in  a 
quarrel;  but  in  her  presence  turmoil  was  an  imper- 
tinent intrusion,  and  to  her  home  we  came  as  to  a 
sanctuary  whither  the  worries  and  the  strifes  of 
hfe  could  not  follow. 

This  power  of  personality  Christ  possessed  to  an 


72       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

eminent  degree.  Alone  he  faced  the  desecrators 
of  the  Temple  and  they  fled  before  him.  Unarmed 
he  faced  the  mob  and  it  parted  and  gave  him  a  safe 
passage.  Ofiicers  came  to  arrest  him  and  returned 
only  to  report  their  failure  because,  Never  man 
spake  like  this  man.  Men  who  lived  with  him  were 
transformed  by  their  companionship.  Peter,  imr 
pulsive,  ardent,  self-confident,  pushing  forward  into 
a  forewarned  danger  and  denying  his  Lord  when 
that  danger  was  imminent,  became  rocklike  in  his 
steadfastness,  and  when  brought  before  the  Jewish 
Council  answered  its  order  forbidding  him  to 
preach  with,  "  We  ought  to  obey  God  rather  than 
man,''  and  followed  it  with  a  forbidden  Gospel 
sermon  on  the  spot.  John,  by  nature  so  vociferant 
that  he  was  called  a  "  son  of  thunder,"  and  so 
ambitious  that  on  the  last  journey  of  his  Master  to 
Jerusalem  he  sought  for  himself  and  his  brother 
the  first  places  in  the  anticipated  kingdom  of  God, 
became  the  preeminent  apostle  of  gentleness  and 
love.  And  Thomas,  so  resolutely  skeptical  that  he 
would  not  accept  any  e\adence  of  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus  Christ,  when  vanquished  by  his  Master's 
personal  presence  uttered  the  supremest  confession 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  73 

of  faith  recorded  In  the  New  Testament  in  his 
greeting,  "  My  Lord  and  my  God." 

This  power  of  inspiring  personality  did  not  cease 
with  his  death.  Transmitted  to  his  disciples  it  has 
remained  the  one  greatest  single  influence  in  the 
history  of  the  world  for  the  last  eighteen  centuries. 
It  has  always  overflowed  the  boundaries  of  the 
church  and  often  exerted  its  influence  in  spite  of  the 
hostility  of  the  ecclesiastics.  The  church  has 
rarely  comprehended  the  nature  and  extent  of  the 
influence  which  its  Master  has  had  upon  mankind. 
If  we  want  to  know  what  is  the  life  which  he  came 
to  give,  we  must  ask  history  what  is  the  life  which 
he  has  given. 

To  depict  accurately  the  change  in  the  life  of  the 
world  which  has  been  wrought  by  the  influence  of 
Jesus  Christ  would  be  quite  beyond  the  limits  of 
this  chapter,  as  it  would  be  quite  beyond  the  power 
of  the  writer.  But  it  is  possible  to  suggest  some 
aspects  of  that  influence.  Its  effect  on  man's 
understanding  of  God  and  of  the  life  acceptable  to 
him  and  so  of  the  nature  of  both  private  and  public 
worship,  I  shall  consider  in  a  future  chapter.  Its 
effect   on   man's    political    and    social    life    I    have 


74       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

already  briefly  indicated.  It  has  given  him  faith 
in  himself  and  in  his  supremacy  over  nature  and  is 
giving  him  faith  in  his  fellow  man  as  a  child  of 
God.  The  statement  in  the  opening  chapter  of 
Genesis  that  God  made  man  in  his  own  image  and 
gave  him  dominion,  over  the  earth  and  its  forces 
and  inhabitants  is  the  secret  of  all  scientific 
progress;  the  statement  of  Jesus  Christ  in  the  New 
Testament,  "  Be  ye  not  called  Master  for  one  is 
your  Master,  even  Christ,  and  all  ye  are  brethren," 
is  the  secret  of  all  social  progress.  Slowly  finding 
its  way  into  the  consciousness  of  the  human  race, 
it  is  substituting  a  democratic  brotherhood  for  a 
feudal  aristocracy,  developing  a  widening  and  a 
spiritual  charity,  organizing  public  systems  of 
education,  inspiring  a  mutual  interest  and  a  mutual 
respect,  creating  a  public  opinion  almost  wholly 
unknown  in  the  ancient  world,  and  thus  laying  the 
foundation  for  free  popular  governments  which 
can  exist  only  when  they  are  based  on  a  common 
intellectual  and  moral  life. 

The  effects  of  Christ's  influence  on  four  chief 
symbolical  expressions  of  the  inner  life  of  man  — 
architecture,  painting,  poetry  and  music  —  is  less 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  75 

frequently    recognized,    but    If    more    indirect    is 
scarcely  less  apparent. 

It  might  be  thought  that  a  religious  faith  that 
God  does  not  dwell  in  temples  made  with  hands 
would  be  fatal  to  church  architecture.  Such,  how- 
ever, was  not  the  case.  The  early  Italian  churches 
were  in  some  cases  pagan  temples,  as  the  Pantheon 
at  Rome,  or  imitations  of  the  pagan  temples.  But 
as  the  Christian  church,  moving  northward,  escaped 
from  the  dominating  influence  of  Roman  paganism, 
it  created  a  new  architecture  for  itself.  The  term 
Gothic,  applied  to  it  originally  in  derision,  has 
become  the  accepted  designation  of  this  type  of 
architecture,  which  was,  however,  so  distinctive  in 
its  character,  and  so  evidently  inspired  by  religious 
motives,  that  it  might  well  have  received  the 
designation  which  excellent  authority  has  proposed 
to  give  it  —  Christian  architecture.  The  cathe- 
drals of  Europe  have  well  been  called  frozen  music; 
they  are  symphonies  of  praise  in  stone.  The  domi- 
nant motive  of  the  architects,  builders  and  workmen 
was  religious,  as  the  dominating  motive  which 
inspires  and  shapes  our  railroad  stations,  factories 
and  skyscrapers  is  commercial.     Thus  each  type  of 


76       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

architecture  interprets,  because  it  expresses,  the  Ufe 
of  the  people  who  have  created  it.  The  interpre- 
tation of  the  Gothic  which  Ruskin  gives  in  his 
"  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  "  has  been  criticized, 
perliaps  justly;  yet  every  impressionable  mind  must 
have  felt  in  such  edifices  as  the  cathedrals  of 
Cologne,  Rheims,  Salisbury,  and  Canterbury  that 
sevenfold  message  of  sacrifice,  truth,  power,  beauty, 
life,  memory  and  obedience,  which  Ruskin  has  dis- 
coviered  in  them.  Nor  is  it  fanciful  to  see  in  their 
aerial  brightness  an  expression  of  the  gladness  of 
heart  and  in  their  spires  and  pinnacles  and  pointed 
arches  a  symbol  of  the  heavenward  aspiration  of 
the  worshipers  who  gathered  within  their  walls. 

The  first  aim  of  the  nascent  Christian  church  was 
to  tell  men  the  story  of  Christ's  life.  It  saw  in 
Christ  the  ideal  of  humanity  and  in  every  incident 
of  his  life  an  inspiration  for  his  followers.  This 
story  could  not  be  told  by  the  pen,  except  to  the 
few,  for  the  many  could  not  read.  It  was  told  to 
the  many  by  the  brush,  for  every  one  could  see  and 
could  comprehend  the  picture.  Mrs.  Jameson,  in 
her  "  History  of  Our  Lord  as  Exemplified  in  Works 
of  Art,"  has  shown  how  the  whole  history  of  that 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  ^j 

life,  from  the  Nativity  to  the  Resurrection,  was 
told  by  artists.  And  every  picture  was  a  sermon. 
That  the  first  great  pictures  were  of  religious 
scenes  and  were  painted  for  the  church,  is  not  due 
to  the  mere  fact  that  the  church  created  a  com- 
mercial demand  for  them.  Christianity  had  in- 
spired a  recognition  of  the  value  of  the  deeper 
life  of  the  spirit,  and  it  was  inevitable  that  as  soon 
as  culture  was  Christianized  the  artist  should  invent 
a  new  medium  for  the  artistic  interpretation  of  this 
deeper  life.  "  It  is  Christianity,"  says  Charles 
Blanc,  "  which  has  supplanted  sculpture  by  placing 
beauty  of  soul  above  that  of  the  body." 

With  the  birth  of  painting  came  the  birth  of  a 
new  kind  of  poetry.  In  the  "  Te  Deum  Laudamus," 
which  is  known  to  have  been  in  use  from  the 
beginning  of  the  sixth  century,  with  adoration  are 
mingled  the  tenderer  feelings  of  penitence,  of  per- 
sonal affection  and  of  confident  trust,  unknown  in 
even  the  best  of  Greek  and  Roman  poets.  Nor  is 
it  only  sacred  hymnology  which  has  felt  the  effect 
of  the  Christian  life.  Not  only  in  Dante's  "  In- 
ferno," "  Purgatorio,"  and  "  Paradiso,"  not  only  in 
Milton's    "  Paradise    Lost "    and    "  Paradise    Re- 


78       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

gained,"  not  only  in  Whittier's  "  Eternal  Goodness  " 
and  Longfellow's  "  Christus  "  is  that  influence  to 
be  seen,  but  scarcely  less  in  the  note  of  human 
experience  found  in  such  poems  as  Tennyson's  "  In 
Memoriam '"'  and  Browning's  "  Ring  and  the 
Book  "  ;  and  that  this  difference  is  not  wholly  due 
to  intellectual  development  is.  apparent  to  any  one 
who  will  compare  with  them  the  exquisite  paganism 
of  Shelley's  verse. 

Still  more  apparent  is  the  influence  of  Christianity 
on  music.  Professor  Edward  Dickinson  interprets 
well  this  influence  in  his  statement  that  a  new  energy 
entered  the  art  of  music  when  enlisted  in  the  min- 
istry of  the  religion  of  Christ,  because  a  new  spirit, 
unknown  to  the  Greek,  the  Roman  and  even  to  the 
Hebrew,  had  taken  possession  of  religious  conscious- 
ness. The  word  music,  as  it  occurs  in  Greek  and 
X-atin  literature,  means  something  very  different 
from  the  meaning  now  attached  to  that  word. 
Little  is  kn'own  of  the  art  as  it  was  practiced  among 
either  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans  or  among  the 
Hebrews,  but  it  was  certainly  of  a  most  primitive 
description.  The  works  on  music  in  Greek  did  not 
concern  the  art  as  we  understand  it,  and  pagan 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  79 

Rome  is  not  known  to  have  produced  a  single  work 
on  the  subject,  nor  did  it  add  anything  to  either 
the  knowledge  of  music  as  a  science  or  the  practice 
of  music  as  an  art.  Music  as  we  now  know  it,  with 
melody  and  harmony,  did  not  exist  prior  to  the 
Christian  era.  Its  existence  is  primarily  due  to  an 
endeavor  to  find  some  fitting  vocal  expression  for 
the  emotions  which  Christianity  had  called  into 
being.  It  is  a  gift  of  Christianity  to  mankind. 
Thus  it  is  that  though  the  Founder  of  Christianity 
is  not  known  to  have  wTitten  a  single  verse,  or  a  line 
of  music,  or  to  have  drawn  a  picture  or  planned 
an  edifice,  music,  poetry,  painting,  and  architecture 
were  all  new  born  in  his  birth  at  Bethlehem. 

It  may  be  said  with  confidence  that  there  would 
neither  be  a  commercial  credit  system,  nor  a  post 
office,  nor  a  public  school  system,  nor  political  nor 
industrial  liberty  if  the  world  had  never  known  the 
influence  of  Jesus  Christ,  since  they  never  have 
existed  where  that  influence  has  not  been  known. 
Architecture,  literature,  painting,  music,  material 
progress,  political  freedom  and  the  social  order  all 
owe  an  inestimable  debt  to  Jesus  Christ,  and  they 
are  all  witnesses  to  the  life  which  he  has  given  to 


8o       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

the  world.  Every  material,  visible,  audible  thing  in 
modem  life  is  Christian  in  so  far  as  it  possesses  the 
Christian  spirit.  The  Sistine  Madonna  is  no  less 
truly  Christian  than  the  Apostles'  Creed;  Bach's 
Passion  music  is  no  less  truly  Christian  than  the 
Catholic  Mass  or  the  Puritan  prayer  meeting;  the 
Salvation  Army  is  no  less  truly  Christian  than  the 
church,  whatever  the  history  of  its  orders.  There 
is  no  more  reason  why  a  Christian  congregation 
should  be  confined  to  the  Apostles'  Creed  or  the 
Nicene  Creed  as  a  statement  of  its  faith  than  why 
it  should  be  confined  to  the  psalms  of  David  in  its 
praises  or  to  a  reproduction  in  its  windows  of  the 
pictures  on  the  walls  of  the  catacombs. 

But  neither  civilization  nor  ecclesiasticism  are 
Christianity.  It  is  the  spirit  of  love,  service  and 
sacrifice;  love  for  his  fellow  man,  the  service  of 
his  fellow  man,  sacrifice  for  his  fellow  man;  the 
life  inspired  by  the  love  of  God  for  his  children, 
the  service  of  God  for  his  children,  the  sacrifice  of 
God  for  his  children.  It  is  the  life  of  God  in  the 
soul  of  man.  It  is  in  the  creed  but  it  is  more  than 
all  the  creeds;  in  the  worship  but  is  more  than  all 
the  rituals;  in  the  institutions  of  a  free  people  but 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  81 

is  more  than  all  their  institutions.  In  all  the  activ- 
ities of  the  so-called  Christian  Church  as  in  all  the 
activities  of  the  so-called  Christian  State,  it  is 
alloyed  with  traditionalism,  superstition,  ignorance 
and  selfishness.  It  is  power,  liberty,  life  work- 
ing its  way  out  in  imperfect  media  and  in  spite  of 
conscious  and  unconscious  hostility  into  its  final 
and  perfect  expression.  It  comes  as  spring  comes, 
which  melts  the  ice  and  sets  free  the  brooks,  clothes 
the  earth  with  its  garment  of  green,  decorates  it 
with  flowers  and  begins  to  prepare  the  summer  and 
autumn  fruits;  but  spring  is  more  than  singing 
brooks  and  growing  grass  and  promise-bearing 
buds.  The  Christian  life  can  no  more  be  confined 
within  a  church  and  its  creeds,  its  rituals,  and  its 
activities  than  spring  can  be  confined  within  a 
favored  garden  by  a  fence.  A  reverent  skepticism 
may  have  in  it  more  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  than 
an  irreverent  credulity.  Voltaire  in  making  war 
against  a  cruel  superstition  falsely  labeled  Christian 
may  have  been  as  truly  serving  God  in  France  as 
John  Wesley  in  preaching  the  freedom  of  the  Gospel 
in  England.  The  passion  of  philanthropy  in  our 
time  —  healing    the    sick,    teaching    the    ignorant, 


82       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

comforting  the  sorrowful,  and  fighting  the  battles 
of  justice  and  liberty  for  the  whole  world  —  is  as 
truly  a  revival  of  Christ's  religion  as  any  that  was 
ever  nurtured  under  church  roofs.  He  who,  in- 
spired by  the  divine  life  of  love,  service  and  sacri- 
fice, is  carrying  glad  tidings  to  the  poor,  deliver- 
ance to  the  captive,  sight  to  the  blind,  and  liberty 
to  the  bruised  is  a  follower  of  Jesus  Christ. 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  life  which  Jesus  Christ 
bestowed  upon  the  world  by  his  teaching,  his 
example  and  his  person,  he  tells  us  in  his  fourth 
definition  of  his  mission.  Just  before  his  death 
Jesus  called  his  disciples  together  for  a  last  con- 
ference, and  he  brought  that  sacred  conference  to 
its  close  by  a  prayer  which  produced  so  profound 
an  influence  upon  his  disciples  that  one  of  their 
number  subsequently  wrote  it  down  and  years 
afterward  gave  it  to  the  world.  In  the  opening 
sentences  of  that  prayer  Christ  pours  forth  out  of 
a  full  heart  a  solemn  thanksgiving  to  the  Father 
for  the  mission  with  which  he  has  been  entrusted, 
and  thus  expresses  the  very  secret  of  that  mission: 
"  Thou  hast  given  him  power  over  all  flesh  that  he 
should  give  eternal  life  to  as  many  as  thou  hast 


I  AM  COME  TO  GIVE  LIFE  83 

given  him.  And  this  is  life  eternal,  that  they  might 
know  thee  the  only  true  God  and  Jesus  Christ 
whom  thou  hast  sent." 

What  eternal  life  means  to  others,  what  it  should 
mean  to  others,  I  have  neither  the  ability  nor  the 
ambition  to  tell.  This  is  simply  a  narrative  of  what 
it  has  meant  to  me  in  my  life,  and  here  I  interrupt 
the  narrative  in  order  to  indicate  in  the  next  chapter 
the  message  of  the  Old  Testament  prophets  who 
have  helped  me  by  their  message  to  understand  the 
mission  of  the  Christ. 


CHAPTER  VI 

I  AM   COME  TO   FULFILL  THE  LAW   AND  THE 
PROPHETS 

Professor  William  James  in  his  interesting 
volume  on  "  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience," 
thus  summarizes  his  survey  of  the  field  of  religion: 
"  The  warring  gods  and  formulas  of  the  various 
religions  do  indeed  cancel  each  other ;  but  there  is  a 
certain  uniform  deliverance  in  which  religions  all 
appear  to  meet.  It  consists  of  two  parts:  (i)  An 
uneasiness;  and  (2)  its  solution.  The  uneasiness, 
reduced  to  its  simplest  terms,  is  a  sense  that  there  is 
something  wrong  about  us  as  we  naturally  stand. 
The  solution  is  a  sense  that  we  are  saved  from  this 
wrongness  by  making  connection  wich  the  higher 
powers." 

There  are  then  two  questions  which  religion  had 
to  answer:  First,  What  are  the  higher  powers? 
Second,  How  shall  we  make  proper  connection  with 
them?     Before  considering  the  answer  of  Jesus  to 

84 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  PROPHETS  85 

these  two  questions  of  religion,  What  are  the 
higher  powers,  and  How  can  man  make  proper  con- 
nection with  them  to  remedy  the  present  wrong- 
ness,  it  is  necessary  to  consider  the  answer  of 
Judaism,  which  Jesus  came  to  interpret  and  com- 
plete. 

In  studying  the  life  and  literature  of  the  ancient 
Hebrews  as  portrayed  in  the  Old  Testament  the 
student  should  always  bear  in  mind  a  simple  prin- 
ciple which  has  often  been  ignored,  alike  by  the 
critics  and  the  eulogists  of  that  collection.  The 
Old  Testament  represents  the  developing  life  of  a 
people  through  a  period  of  at  least  a  thousand 
years.  It  therefore  portrays  the  crudities,  the 
errors,  and  the  vices  of  a  people  out  of  which  they 
have  been  led,  no  less  than  the  principles  incul- 
cated by  their  leaders.  And  in  the  Old  Testament 
the  defects  in  the  national  character  are  depicted 
with  extraordinary  fidelity.  But  in  attempting  to 
estimate  the  influence  of  any  people  upon  modem 
thought  and  life  we  do  not  measure  that  influence 
by  the  ignorances,  superstitions,  and  falsities  of  the 
common  people,  but  by  the  truths  which  their  great 
leaders   have   interpreted.     We   do   not   think   the 


86       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

message  of  Great  Britain  has  been  absolutism  be- 
cause the  Stuarts  were  absolutists,  nor  that  the 
message  of  America  is  the  righteousness  of  slavery 
because  at  one  time  in  its  history  it  maintained  an 
almost  pagan  slave  system.  England  is  interpreted 
by  its  overthrow  of  the  Stuarts  and  America  by  its 
emancipation  of  the  slaves.  The  slaughter  of  the 
Canaanites  and  the  imprecatory  psalms  are  not  a 
part  of  the  message  of  Israel.  They  indicate  the 
native  savagery  of  the  people  and  make  more 
luminous  the  message  of  their  prophetic  leaders. 

And  this  message  itself  was  a  developing  mes- 
sage. The  truth  of  God  grows  in  the  mind  of  a 
race  as  in  the  mind  of  an  individual.  In  measuring 
the  character  and  influence  of  a  nation,  we  have  to 
consider,  not  its  condition  at  any  one  stage  of  its 
progress,  but  the  direction  in  which  it  progressed; 
not  the  opinions  ©f  its  majority,  but  the  ideals  of 
its  leaders. 

The  Hebrew  prophets  were  not  the  first  monothe- 
ists.  The  great  thinkers  in  all  ages  of  the  world 
and  in  all  forms  of  religion  have  tended  toward 
belief  in  one  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy.  This 
was  the  philosophy,  if  it  was  not  the  faith,  of  the 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  PROPHETS  87 

spiritual  aristocracy  of  India  and  of  Egypt  in 
periods  prior  to  any  history  of  Israel  which  we 
possess.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  quite  certain  that 
in  the  early  history  of  Israel  the  people  believed  in 
many  gods;  they  rested  content  in  the  conviction 
that  their  God,  Jehovah,  was  superior  to  the  gods 
of  the  peoples  round  about.  And  it  is  by  no  means 
certain  that  this  popular  opinion  was  not  for  a 
time  shared  by  some  of  their  eminent  leaders. 

What  was  peculiar  to  the  ancient  Hebrews  was 
their  faith  in  a  human  God.  The  pagan  nations 
with  whom  they  had  any  acquaintance  looked 
through  nature  to  nature's  god.  Nature  was  to 
them  the  symbol  and  the  interpretation  of  the 
Deity.  Nature,  therefore,  in  its  various  manifesta- 
tions, was  the  object  of  their  reverence.  Nature 
reverence  took  on  a  great  variety  of  forms,  from 
the  worship  of  the  sun  to  the  worship  of  the  sacred 
ox  or  the  sacred  beetle.  Israel  from  the  very 
beginning  of  its  history  was  led  elsewhere  for  its 
symbol  and  interpretation  of  Deity.  Its  prophets 
looked,  not  through  nature  to  nature's  god,  but 
through  humanity  to  humanity's  God.  Signs  of 
polytheism  there  are  in  Israel's  history  —  that  is, 


88      WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

the  recognition,  if  not  the  adoration,  of  many  gods; 
but  there  are  no  signs  of  nature  worship  except  in 
occasional  scathing  condemnation  of  it  as  a  depar- 
ture from  the  faith  of  the  fathers.  The  philoso- 
phers have  coined  a  long  word  to  represent  this 
faith  in  a  human  God;  they  call  it  anthropomor- 
phism, from  two  Greek  words,  meaning  in  the  form 
of  man.  The  religion  of  Israel  was  frankly 
anthropomorphic. 

This,  their  fundamental  faith,  does  not  merely 
appear  in  the  declaration  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  that  God  made  man  in  his  own  image.  It 
is  easy  to  put  too  much  emphasis  on  a  single  text. 
That  conception  of  creation  might  have  been,  and 
perhaps  was,  borrowed  from  a  foreign  and  earlier 
source.  But  the  whole  Jewish  conception  of  God, 
life,  and  duty  rested  on  and  was  developed  out  of 
this  idea  —  that  it  is  within,  not  without,  in  the 
intellectual  and  moral  life  of  man,  not  in  the  forms 
and  phenomena  of  nature,  that  man  is  to  look  for 
his  interpretation  of  the  Being  whom  he  is  to  rever- 
ence and  obey. 

This  belief  is  implied  in  the  visit  of  the  three 
angels  of  the  Lord  to  Abraham  in  his  tent;  in 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  PROPHETS  89 

the  report  that  Jehovah  wrote  the  Ten  Command- 
ments with  his  finger  on  the  tables  of  stone;  in 
the  appearance  at  Jericho  of  the  captain  of  Je- 
hovah's host  as  a  man  with  drawn  sword  in  his 
hand;  in  the  similar  appearance  of  the  Lord  of 
Hosts,  in  the  Temple,  to  Isaiah;  and  in  the  vision 
of  the  Son  of  God  in  the  fiery  furnace  with  the 
three  Hebrew  children.  It  is  implied  in  the  figures 
of  prophet  and  poet,  who  compare  God  rarely  to 
any  physical  object,  habitually  to  a  human  life. 
Like  as  a  shepherd  shepherdeth  his  sheep ;  like  as  a 
king  ruleth  over  his  people;  like  as  a  father  pitieth 
his  children;  like  as  a  mother  comforteth  her 
child  —  these  and  such  as  these  figures  direct  the 
thoughts  of  Israel  inward  in  their  search  for  the 
Eternal.  The  customary  prophetic  phrase,  "  Thus 
saith  Jehovah,"  inevitably  suggests  a  human  God 
speaking  to  his  earthly  companion. 

Nor  was  this  conception  confined  to  the  seers  and 
prophets.  It  characterized  the  Temple  service.  In 
the  Holy  of  Holies  of  all  heathen  temples  a  symbol 
of  the  Deity  was  enshrined.  Such  a  symbol  was 
enshrined  in  the  Holy  of  Holies  of  the  Jewish 
Temple.     But  there  it  was  not  an  image  of  a  phys- 


90       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

ical  object,  but  a  symbol  of  a  human  experience. 
The  symbols  of  the  Deity  were  the  Ten  Command- 
ments and  the  Altar  of  Mercy.  Thus  the  Temple 
repeated  the  message  of  the  prophets,  saying, 
Would  you  know  whom  to  worship  ?  Look  within. 
Worship  the  God  who  is  interpreted  by  the  law 
written  in  your  conscience  and  by  the  compassion 
which  you  feel  for  the  suffering  and  the  sinful.  It 
is  not  power,  it  is  justice  and  mercy,  which  make 
Jehovah  worthy  of  your  reverence  and  your 
loyalty. 

As  the  Jewish  religion  thus  taught  its  votaries 
the  humanness  of  God,  it  taught  also,  and  by  the 
same  figures,  the  divinity  of  man.  Man  was 
made  in  the  image  of  God;  into  man  God  has 
breathed  the  breath  of  his  own  life.  Man  is  the 
offspring  of  God.  Thus  the  same  fundamental 
conception  of  man's  origin  and  nature  taught  the 
ancient  Jew  the  approachableness  of  God  and  the 
dig'nity  of  man.  And  this  aspect  of  man's  inherent 
worth  and  dignity  is  not  dependent  on  a  single  text. 
It  is  implicit  in  the  whole  religious  and  political 
history  of  Israel.  It  is  involved  in  the  doctrine  of 
possible  fellowship  between  God  and  man,  which  is 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  PROPHETS  91 

perhaps  the  most  distinguishing  note  of  the  Old 
Testament.  God  is  something"  more  and  other 
than  a  Creator  and  Ruler  concealed  behind  nature; 
he  is  the  Friend  and  Companion  of  man,  and  gives 
him  law  and  counsel  and  comfort.  Jehovah,  said  the 
Psalmist,  is  my  shepherd.  He  leadeth  me  beside  the 
still  waters.  If  I  stray,  he  restoreth  my  soul.  If 
I  come  into  darkness  and  the  valley  of  the  shadow 
of  death,  he  goes  with  me  there.  He  is  my  refuge 
and  my  fortress.  Unknown  he  may  be;  but  I  can 
dwell  in  the  secret  place  of  the  Host  High:  I  can 
abide  under  the  shadow  of  the  Almighty. 

And  he  is  represented  as  with  Israel  not  only  in 
his  hours  of  devotion  but  in  his  common  tasks.  It 
is  he  who  inspires  the  artisan  to  devise  cunning 
works  in  gold  and  in  silver,  to  cut  the  stone  and 
carve  the  timl^er  and  embroider  the  cloths  for  the 
Temple  service.  It  is  he  who  teaches  the  farmer 
how  to  plow  and  harvest  and  sow  his  fields  and  how 
to  thresh  his  wheat  and  winnow  it.  It  is  he  who 
enables  the  warrior  to  run  through  an  opposing  troop 
and  leap  in  his  flight  over  an  obstructing  wall;  he 
who  enables  the  hunter  to  scale  the  dangerous  preci- 
pice.    So  close  is  his  companionship  with  Israel  that 


92      WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

to  commune  with  one's  own  soul  is  to  commune  with 
him.  "  Jehovah  will  hear  when  I  call  upon  him. 
Stand  in  awe  and  sin  not ;  commune  with  your  own 
heart  upon  your  bed  and  be  still."  ^  "  To  the  Jew," 
says  James  Cotter  Morison,  "  God  is  the  Great  Com- 
panion, the  profound  and  loving,  yet  terrible,  friend 
of  his  inmost  soul,  with  whom  he  holds  communion 
in  the  sanctuary  of  his  heart,  to  whom  he  turns  or 
should  turn,  in  every  hour  of  adversity  or  happi- 
ness." ^  All  this  implies  not  only  faith  In  God,  it 
also  implies  faith  in  oneself  as  being  of  kin  to  God 
and  fitted  for  companionship  with  him. 

But  did  not  Israel  believe  that  the  race  had  fallen 
and  in  that  fall  had  lost  this  companionship?  No! 
There  is  not  the  least  evidence  that  the  Israelitish 
people  held  any  such  opinion.  There  is  in  the  third 
chapter  of  Genesis -a  parable  of  sin  and  fall,  which 
truly  interprets  the  individual  experience  of  ^every 
soul  when  it  steps  aside  from  the  path  of  innocency; 
but  there  is  nothing  in  that  chapter  to  indicate  that 
the  writer  of  it  believed  that  the  whole  human  race 
sinned  in  Adam  and   fell  with  him  in  the  great 

1  Psalms  23:91;  Exodus  31:1-10;  Isaiah  28:23-28;  Psalms 
18:29-32,  4:3,  4- 
2 "  The  Service  of  Man,"  p.  181. 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  PROPHETS  93 

transgression.  No  such  doctrine  is  to  be  found, 
eitlier  expressed  or  implied,  in  the  religious  teach- 
ings of  the  Old  Testament.  There  is  not,  after 
the  third  chapter  of  Genesis,  from  Genesis  to 
Malachi,  any  reference  to  the  fall  of  man;  nor  any 
in  the  New  Testament  except  incidentally  and  by 
way  of  suggestion  in  two  of  Paul's  letters.  It  is  a 
curious  illustration  of  tlie  unscripturalness  of  much 
of  our  theology  that  this  doctrine  of  a  historic  fall 
and  resultant  depravity,  which  has  been  made  one 
of  the  foundation  stones  of  Christian  theology,  has 
nothing  in  the  Bible  to  support  it  except  a  parable 
in  the  Old  Testament  and  a  parenthesis  in  the 
New  Testament. 

It  is  because  man  is  thus  of  kin  to  God  that  he 
can  understand  the  law.  That  law  is  addressed 
to  his  reason  and  his  conscience.  It  is  always  por- 
trayed as  a  reasonable  and  a  just  law,  which  is 
only  another  way  of  saying  that  it  appeals  to  man's 
reason  and  sense  of  justice.  In  truth,  the  law 
was  not  something  external  given  to  him;  it  was 
an  interpretation  to  him  of  his  own  nature.  The 
law  was  the  law  of  his  own  being;  its  enunciation 
by  the  prophet  was  simply  an  interpretation  to  him 


94       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

of  himself.  He  had  only  to  look  within  to  find  its 
verification  and  its  sanction.  Jehovah  is  portrayed 
by  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  as 
saying  to  Israel : 

For  this  commandment  which  I  command  thee  this 
day,  it  is  not  hidden  from  thee,  neither  is  it  far  off.  It 
is  not  in  heaven,  that  thou  shouldest  say,  Who  shall  go 
up  for  us  to  heaven  and  bring  it  unto  us,  that  we  may 
hear  it  and  do  it?  Neither  is  it  beyond  the  sea,  that 
thou  shouldest  say,  Who  shall  go  over  the  sea  for  us  and 
bring  it  unto  us,  that  we  may  hear  it  and  do  it?  But  the 
word  is  very  nigh  unto  thee,  in  thy  mouth,  and  in  thy 
heart,  that  thou  mayest  do  it,  .  .  . 

This  was  the  fundamental  teaching  of  the 
prophets  of  the  Old  Testament  —  that  God  dwells 
with  man  and  dwells  in  man. 

This  truth  is  dramatically  illustrated  in  the 
experience  of  Elijah.  Disappointed  by  the  failure 
of  his  attempted  reformation  of  religion,  finding 
the  worship  of  Baal  very  much  alive  although  many 
of  the  priests  of  Baal  had  been  slain,  his  life 
threatened  by  the  Queen,  himself  deserted  by  the 
people,  depressed  and  hoping  for  death,  he  was  sum- 
moned by  Jehovah  for  an  interview  at  Mount 
Horab.     The  great  convulsions  of  nature  which  he 


THE  LAW  AND  THE  PROPHETS  95 

witnessed  fitted  his  mood  but  brought  him  no  mes- 
sage. A  tempest  swept  through  the  valley  and 
broke  in  pieces  the  rocks,  but  Jehovah  was  not  in 
the  wind;  an  earthquake  followed,  he  was  not  in 
the  earthquake;  volcanic  fires  flamed  from  the 
ground,  he  was  not  in  the  fires.  But  when  all  had 
passed  by,  and  a  great  quiet  followed,  a  still  small 
voice  spake  to  him.  And  the  still  small  voice  was 
the  voice  of  his  God  and  brought  him  God's  mes- 
sage. 

This  truth  that  God  dwells  with  man  and  in  man 
is  interpreted  in  Israel's  declaration  that  he  whom 
the  heaven  of  heavens  cannot  contain  dwells  in  the 
man  of  a  humble  heart  and  a  contrite  spirit.  And 
it  interprets  the  universal  presence  of  God  as  ex- 
pressed in  such  a  passage  as  the  139th  Psalm: 

Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  spirit? 

or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  face? 
If  I  climb  up  into  heaven,  thou  art  there, 

or  if  I  make  Hades  my  bed,  lo,  thou  art  there. 
If  I  lift  up  the  wings  of  the  dawn, 

and  settle  at  the  farther  end  of  the  sea, 
Even  there  shall  thy  hand  lead  me, 

and  thy  right  hand  take  hold  of  me. 
And  if  I  say,  "  Let  deep  darkness  screen  me, 

and  the  light  about  me  be  night," 


96      WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Even  darkness  is  not  dark  with  thee, 
but  the  night  is  clear  as  the  day  — 
the  darkness  is  equal  to  the  light.^ 

God's  presence  is  intimate,  continuous,  inescap- 
able. Man  cannot  escape  from  God  because  God 
dwells  in  man  and  man  cannot  escape  from  himself. 

This  faith  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  that  God  is  a 
human  God  we  must  comprehend  if  we  would  com- 
prehend the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
as  they  were  seen,  understood  and  interpreted  by  his 
disciples  after  his  death.  To  an  interpretation  of 
that  life  and  teaching  I  invite  the  reader  in  the 
next  chapter. 

*  F.  Cheyne's  translation. 


CHAPTER  VII 

I    HAVE   MANIFESTED   THY    NAME 

In  the  Episcopal  version  of  the  Psalter  occurs 
this  sentence :  "  Thou,  O  Lord  God,  art  the  thing 
that  I  long  for:  Thou  art  my  hope  even  from  my 
youth."  That  sentence  expresses  what  has  been 
my  longing  from  my  youth,  and  that  longing  is 
satisfied  by  Jesus  Christ. 

When  I  began  my  systematic  studies  in  the  life 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  I  had  an  imaginary  conception 
of  God  as  an  always  just  and  sometimes  merciful 
king,  sitting  on  a  great  white  throne,  ruling  the 
universe,  to  whom  I  might  send  my  prayers  by  a 
kind  of  wireless  telegraphy,  though  wireless  teleg- 
raphy was  not  then  known,  and  from  whom  I  might 
get  responses  chiefly  through  either  the  church  or 
the  Bible.  I  really  worshiped  an  idol,  though 
made  of  imagination,  not  of  wood  or  stone.  As  I 
pursued  my  studies  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  his  life  and 
character  more  and  more  inspired  my  reverence  and 

97 


98       WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

love.  Long  since  that  spiritual  idol  has  disappeared 
from  my  temple,  and  its  place  has  been  taken  by 
the  God  who  has  been  revealed  to  me  in  the  earthly 
life  and  character  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  No  char- 
acter that  I  can  imagine,  no  character  that  I  can 
build  up  out  of  the  scattered  fragments  furnished 
by  history  and  literature,  can  for  a  moment  com- 
pare in  my  thought  with  what  James  Martineau 
has  well  called  "  the  realized  ideal  "  which  that  life 
and  character  furnish  to  the  world.  Discussions 
between  the  Unitarians  and  the  Trinitarians  have 
been  largely  upon  the  question  what  is  the  meta- 
physical relation  between  Jesus  Christ  and  the 
Father  of  whom  every  family  in  heaven  and  earth 
is  named.  I  do  not  know  what  that  metaphysical 
relation  is.  I  do  not  care  to  know.  It  is  enough 
that  to  me  Jesus  Christ  is  the  supreme  manifesta- 
tion of  the  eternal  God,  not  the  manifestation  of 
one  part  of  him  or  of  one  office  which  he  performs  in 
the  world,  not  more  the  manifestation  of  his  mercy 
than  of  his  justice,  not  more  the  manifestation  of 
his  tenderness  than  of  his  authority,  but  the  mani- 
festation of  the  truth  that  God  is  Immanuel  —  that 
is,  God  with  us. 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME  99 

To  state  an  experience  in  the  terms  of  philosophy 
is  always  difficult,  yet  my  philosophy  and  my  experi- 
ence are  so  intermingled  that  I  cannot  separate 
them.  I  may  perhaps  express  them  thys:  The 
veiled,  invisible  figure,  that  is  always  walking 
through  life,  always  judging,  befriending,  forgiv- 
ing, helping  men,  was  for  one  moment  made  so 
clear  that  human  eyes  could  see  him  and  human 
hands  could  handle  him;  then  hidden  from  human 
eyes  and  escaping  from  human  touch,  he  has  become 
the  nearer  to  us  because  he  is  invisible  and  in- 
tangible. 

Jesus  came  to  a  people  trained  through  centuries 
of  religious  teaching,  alike  by  the  instructions  of 
their  prophets  and  by  symbols  in  their  temple,  to 
believe  that  God  had  made  man  in  his  own  image 
and  therefore  in  man  men  were  to  look  for  the 
image  of  God.  In  his  teaching  Jesus  assumed  this 
Jewish  point  of  view.  He  did  not  attempt  to  con- 
duct his  disciples  through  nature  to  nature's  God; 
he  endeavored  to  conduct  his  disciples  through 
humanity  to  humanity's  God.  He  assumed  that 
God  has  made  man  in  his  own  image  and  that 
in   the   experiences   of   human   nature   we   are   to 


100     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

look  for  an  interpretation  of  God's  character.  He 
did  not  define  God  or  the  conditions  of  fellow- 
ship with  God,  but  he  brought  to  his  disciples 
in  his  life  and  experience  a  revelation  or  unveiling 
of  the  God  who  dwelt  within  him  and  thus  showed 
to  his  disciples  the  way  to  fellowship  with  their 
Great  Companion.  For  this  purpose  he  took  one 
of  the  most  common  and  one  of  the  most  sacred 
of  human  relationships,  that  between  a  father  and 
his  child.  He  told  them,  When  ye  pray  say,  *'  Our 
Father." 

We  make  a  great  mistake  if  we  conceive  the 
"  Lord's  Prayer  "  to  be  a  form  which  Christ  has  pre- 
scribed. It  is  a  spirit  of  approach  which  Christ 
illustrates.  Look,  he  says,  into  your  father-heart; 
It  will  interpret  your  Father  to  you.  Do  you  want 
to  become  acquainted  with  God  ?  Go  to  him  as  your 
children  come  to  you.  What  are  the  things  you 
want  ?  Are  they  not  such  as  the  following  ?  You 
want  food  for  the  body,  the  mind,  the  spirit.  Ask 
your  Father  for  them.  If  your  son  asks  of  you 
bread  will  you  give  him  a  stone?  You  want  for- 
giveness for  the  wrongs  you  have  done?  Do  you 
always  exact  of  your  son  the  full  penalty  for  his 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME         loi 

every  transgression?  Do  you  demand  an  eye  for 
an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth?  If  you  forgive 
your  children  their  trespasses,  why  doubt  that  your 
Father  will  forgive  you  your  trespasses?  Are  you 
not  often  perplexed  which  road  to  take  in  life? 
Ask  your  Father  for  guidance.  Do  you  not  some- 
times dread  a  temptation  which  looms  in  the  dis- 
tance with  threatening?  Ask  him  to  lead  you  by  a 
path  which  will  escape  it.  Does  it  not  sometimes 
seem  to  you  impossible  to  overcome  the  evil  desires 
within  or  the  seductive  influences  without  you? 
Ask  him  to  strengthen  your  will  and  give  you 
power  to  conquer  the  world  and  your  own  baser 
self.  Do  you  want  his  spirit,  the  spirit  that  will 
enable  you  to  do  his  will,  to  do  what  you  can  to 
bring  his  rule  upon  the  earth?  He  imparts  his 
own  spirit  to  those  that  ask  him,  as  you  love  to 
impart  your  wisdom  and  your  strength  to  your  child 
by  your  counsel  and  companionship.  There  Is 
nothing  too  insignificant  for  his  concern  if  it  con- 
cerns his  child.  The  very  hairs  of  your  head  are 
numbered.  You  are  never  beneath  his  notice.  He 
is  so  great  that  to  him  nothing  is  small.  A  sparrow* 
cannot  fall  to  the  ground  and  he  not  know  it.     And 


102     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

in  the  thought  of  him  who  made  you  in  his  own 
image,  you  are  of  much  more  vakie  than  many 
sparrows. 

All  Christ's  instructions  had  for  their  aim  to 
bring  his  disciples  into  fellowship  with  God.  The 
Westminster  Confession  of  Faith  has  what  may  be 
conceded  to  be  an  admirable  and  comprehensive 
conception  of  the  Higher  Powers : 

There  is  but  one  only  living  and  true  God,  who  is 
infinite  in  being  and  perfection,  a  most  pure  spirit,  in- 
visible, without  body,  parts,  or  passions,  immutable,  im- 
mense, eternal,  incomprehensible,  almighty,  most  wise, 
most  holy,  most  free,  most  absolute. 

Christ's  instructions  contain  nothing  analogous 
to  this  definition.  He  did  not  attempt  to  describe 
the  attributes  of  God.  He  did  not  discuss  and  he 
did  not  give  any  information  concerning  such  ques- 
tions as.  Is  God  omnipotent  and  what  does  omnipo- 
tent mean?  Is  he  omniscient,  and  what  does 
omniscience  mean?  The  nearest  approach  to  a 
definition  of  God  which  is  to  be  found  in  Christ's 
instructions  is  in  the  sentence,  "  God  is  spirit "  ; 
and  this  definition,  if  so  it  can  be  called,  was  given 
only  for  the  purpose  of  making  clear  the  sentence 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME         103 

which  follows,  "  And  they  that  worship  him  must 
worship  him  in  spirit  and  in  truth."  It  was  given 
for  the  purpose  of  showing  us  that  our  approach 
to  God  does  not  depend  on  any  particular  form  or 
ceremony  but  wholly  upon  our  spiritual  sincerity 
and  earnestness.     In  brief: 

Christ  does  not  teach  us  about  God ;  he  makes  us 
acquainted  with  God. 

John  Stuart  Mill  wrote  in  1834  to  Thomas 
Carlyle :  "  I  have  what  appears  to  you  much  the 
same  thing  as  or  even  worse  than  no  God  at  all, 
namely  a  probable  God.  ...  I  mean  that  the 
existence  of  a  Creator  is  not  to  me  a  matter  of 
faith  or  intuition ;  and  as  a  proposition  to  be  proved 
by  evidence  it  is  but  an  hypothesis,  the  proofs  of 
which,  as  you  I  know  agree  with  me,  do  not  amount 
to  absolute  certainty.  .  .  .  The  unspeakable  good  it 
would  be  to  me  to  have  a  faith  like  yours,  I  mean 
as  firm  as  yours,  on  that,  to  you,  fundamental 
point,  I  am  as  strongly  conscious  of  when  life  is  a 
happiness  to  me,  as  when  it  is,  what  it  lias  been  for 
long  periods  now  past  by,  a  burden."  ^ 

No  reader  of  Christ's  teachings  can  doubt  that  to 
1 "  Letters  of  John  Stuart  Mill,"  vol.  1 :  90. 


104     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

him  God  was  not  an  hypothesis  but  a  personal 
and  intimate  friend.  He  did  not  from  a  study  of 
the  creation  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  there  is  a 
Creator,  as  the  scientist  from  a  study  of  the  arrow 
heads  found  in  rocks,  arrives  at  the  conclusion 
that  there  was  a  prehistoric  man.  He  was 
acquainted  with  God  as  a  child  is  acquainted  with 
his  father,  and  his  aim  was,  not  to  demonstrate  by 
the  scientific  method  the  existence  of  a  Creator, 
but  to  impart  to  his  disciples  a  spirit  of  filial  obe- 
dience which  would  give  to  them  an  experience 
of  companionship  with  God  similar  to  his  own. 
He  himself  lived  in  continual  and  unbroken  com- 
panionship with  God;  and  he  sought  to  inspire  in 
his  disciples  a  spirit  which  would  enable  them  to 
live  in  a  similar  companionship. 

And  he  assumed  that  this  companionship  with 
God  is  not  a  special  privilege  of  saints  or  scholars 
but  is  the  common  heritage  of  all  God's  children. 
He  spoke  to  the  plain  people,  not  only  in  language 
which  they  could  understand  but  of  experiences 
which  they  could  appreciate  and  of  virtues  which 
they  could  exercise.  The  figures  he  used  to  illus- 
trate the  life  of   God  in  the  soul  of  man  were 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME        105 

taken  from  the  ordinary  vocations  of  the  common 
people;  they  were  such  as  a  farmer  sowing  his 
seed,  a  fisherman  casting  his  net,  a  steward  faithful 
to  his  absent  lord,  a  woman  preparing  bread  for 
her  household,  a  merchant  buying  a  valuable  pearl, 
a  lucky  finder  of  a  treasure  hidden  in  a  field  who 
sells  all  that  he  has  to  purchase  the  field.  It  is  of 
little  children  whose  characters  are  not  yet  formed 
he  said,  "  Of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven  " ;  it  is 
to  a  miscellaneous  congregation  of  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men  he  said,  "  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
within  you  " ;  it  is  of  corrupt  politicians  and  aban- 
doned women  he  said  that  they  should  enter  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  before  the  men  whose  pretentious 
piety  was  worn  as  a  cover  for  greedy  hearts  and 
selfish  lives ;  it  is  to  a  woman  of  the  town  who  had 
shown  her  sorrow  for  her  past  life  by  her  tears,  and 
her  revering  acceptance  of  his  message  by  anointing 
his  feet  with  ointment  that  he  said,  "  Thy  faith  has 
saved  thee  " ;  and  he  whose  last  supper  with  his 
eleven  personal  friends  we  have  made  a  church  sac- 
rament, ate  also  with  publicans  and  sinners  in  a  feast 
which  was  not  less  sacramental. 

Thus  the  faith  of  Jesus  in  his  Father  was  a  faith 


io6     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

also  in  his  fellow  men.  He  believed  that  there  was 
in  them  something  of  the  divine  life  and  that  it 
might  be  so  inspired  as  to  become  an  invincible 
power.  This  faith  he  showed  by  carrying  not  only 
the  message  of  charity,  but  also  the  message  of  trust 
and  confidence  to  the  plain  people.  He  told  them 
that  the  Father  trusted  them  and  put  responsibilities 
upon  them.  He  made  clear  to  them  that  the 
Father  does  not  desire  to  keep  his  children  in  the 
nursery;  that  he  desires  that  they  grow  up  into 
brave,  wise,  strong  men  endowed  with  a  noble 
manhood.  And  they  can  become  brave  only  by 
facing  danger,  strong  only  by  bearing  burdens,  wise 
only  by  solving  problems. 

And  he  made  it  clear  that  while  God  is  the  Great 
Ruler  of  men  and  their  Great  Helper  and  their  Great 
Companion,  he  will  not  impose  on  the  indifferent  un- 
sought companionship,  nor  force  his  help  on  those 
who  desire  to  live  without  it,  nor  drive  into  his  king- 
dom those  who  do  not  wish  to  become  its  citizens. 
He  who  desires  the  Father's  counsel  must  ask  for  it ; 
he  who  desires  the  Father's  companionship  must  seek 
it ;  he  who  desires  to  be  in  the  Father's  kingdom  and 
under  the  Father's  rule  must  knock  for  admission. 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME         107 

This  truth  that  the  Father  entrusts  the  direction  of 
their  Hves  to  his  children  and  gives  them  at  once  Hb- 
erty  to  choose  and  responsibihty  for  their  choice, 
Christ  illustrates  by  a  very  simple  but  very  striking 
story. 

A  father  had  two  sons.  At  his  death  the  prop- 
erty would  be  divided  between  them.  But  the 
younger  son  was  not  willing  to  wait  for  his  father's 
death.  He  was  impatient  of  control,  weary  of  his 
home  and  its  duties,  wished  to  live  his  own  life, 
carv^e  out  his  own  destiny,  try  experiments  for 
himself.  He  came  to  his  father  with  the  demand, 
Give  me  the  portion  of  goods  that  falleth  to  me  as 
my  share  of  the  inheritance.  The  father  did  not 
refuse.  He  anticipated  his  own  death,  gave  his  son 
the  inheritance  which  in  due  course  would  later 
come  to  him,  and  let  him  go  forth  to  try  the  world 
for  himself.  It  is  thus  the  Father  treats  his  chil- 
dren. He  puts  the  rudder  into  their  own  hands 
and  lets  them  choose  their  own  course  of  life. 

In  teaching  this  truth,  that  God  entrusts  to  his 
children,  individually  and  collectively,  the  determin- 
ation of  their  own  destiny,  Jesus  carried  out  the 
earlier  teaching  of  the  Old  Testament.     It  is  equally 


io8     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

clearly  taught  in  Jehovah's  treatment  of  Israel  as  a 
nation  and  in  Christ's  treatment  of  his  disciples  as 
pioneers  in  the  church. 

When  Moses  brought  the  Children  of  Israel  to 
Mt  Sinai,  God  did  not  assume  to  be  their  sovereign. 
He  was  elected  their  sovereign  by  popular  suffrage. 
Before  he  gave  them  the  Ten  Commandments 
which  were  to  be  the  constitution  of  the  new 
nation,  he  directed  Moses  to  put  before  the  assembly 
of  the  people  the  question  whether  they  would  have 
him  as  their  king.  "  Thus  shalt  thou  tell  the  Chil- 
dren of  Israel:  If  ye  will  obey  my  voice  indeed 
and  keep  my  covenant,  ye  shall  be  unto  me  a  king- 
dom of  priests  and  a  holy  nation."  Moses  brought 
to  the  Children  of  Israel  this  message  and  "  all  the 
people  answered  together  and  said,  all  that  Jehovah 
hath  spoken  will  we  do."  Not  till  then  was  their 
constitution  given  them;  not  till  then  did  Jehovah 
assume  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation. 

Later,  after  they  had  been  under  the  rule  of 
Jehovah  for  over  forty  years  and  had  realized  the 
justice,  the  mercy,  but  also  the  inflexibility  of  his 
rule,  and  had  taken  possession  of  the  Holy  Land, 
the  same  question  was  put  to  the  people  before 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME        109 

their  final  settlement:  "If  it  seem  evil  unto  you," 
said  Joshua,  "  to  serve  Jehovah,  choose  ye  this  day 
whom  ye  will  serve;  whether  the  gods  which  your 
fathers  served,  that  were  beyond  the  River,  or  the 
gods  of  the  Amorites,  in  whose  land  ye  dwell." 
And  he  put  before  them  very  explicitly  the  difficulty 
of  the  life  to  which  loyalty  to  Jehovah  summoned 
them.  Again  the  people  voted  whom  they  woiild 
have  as  their  ruler.  "Nay,"  they  replied,  "but 
we  will  serve  Jehovah." 

When  some  centuries  subsequently  the  author  of 
Deuteronomy  put  before  Israel  a  later  interpreta- 
tion and  amplification  of  the  law,  as  it  had  been 
developed  in  the  life  of  the  nation,  while  the  inevi- 
table result  of  disobedience  was  clearly  pointed  out, 
the  same  freedom  of  choice  to  obey  or  disobey  was 
affirmed:  "  I  have  set  before  thee  life  and  death, 
blessing  and  cursing :  therefore  choose  life,  that  both 
thou  and  thy  seed  may  live." 

Finally,  as  the  captivity  of  Israel  in  Babylon 
drew  to  its  close,  it  was  left  to  the  exiles  to  deter- 
mine whether  they  would  return  to  their  native 
land  and  endure  the  difficulties  and  privations  of  a 
new  settlement  in  a  country  devastated  by  wars,  or 


no     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

would  remain  in  comparative  comfort  in  the  land 
in  which  most  of  them  were  born  and  where  they 
possessed  the  only  home  they  had  ever  known. 
Some  went,  some  remained. 

Thus  in  the  four  great  crises  of  their  history, 
the  responsibility  of  determining  their  national 
destiny  was  thrown  upon  Israel  by  Jehovah. 

Jesus  Christ  dealt  with  his  disciples  in  the  same 
spirit.  He  put  upon  them  the  responsibility  of 
their  lives.  After  the  twelve  had  been  with  him 
scarcely  a  3'ear,  he  sent  them  out  two  by  two,  to 
carry  to  the  villages  the  same  message  of  the 
Father's  love  that  he  was  carrying  to  the  cities, 
and  he  left  them  to  phrase  that  message,  each 
according  to  his  own  understanding  of  it.  In  one 
somewhat  enigmatical  and  often  misunderstood 
passage,  he  told  them  that  he  gave  them  the  keys 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven;  life  was  theirs,  they 
could  open  what  doors  they  would  and  what  they 
would  they  could  lock  against  themselves.  After 
his  death  he  put  upon  the  disciples  the  responsibility 
for  carrying  on  to  its  completion  the  work  which 
he  had  begun.  You  can  do  the  work  if  you  will, 
he  told  them,  but  if  not,  it  will  not  be  done.     You 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME         in 

can  cure  the  world  of  its  sins;  but  if  you  do  not 
cure  it,  the  world  will  not  be  cured/  They  should 
have  his  companionship  as  he  had  his  Father's 
companionship.  But  the  work  would  be  theirs,  the 
responsibility  would  be  theirs,  the  results  would 
depend  upon  them. 

And  this  in  fact  has  been  the  case.  When  his 
disciples  have  possessed  his  spirit,  and  in  that  spirit 
have  carried  on  his  work,  they  have  succeeded. 
When  they  have  lost  his  spirit,  when  they  have 
been  idle  and  indifferent,  or  busy  about  other 
things,  or  have  quarreled  among  themselves,^  the 
work  has  halted,  progress  has  stopped,  humanity 
has  suffered. 

But  it  was  not  only  by  his  words  that  Jesus 
taught  his  disciples.  What  should  be  their  conduct 
toward  one  another  he  taught  them  by  his  own 
conduct;  what  might  be  their  experience  of  God  he 
taught  them  by  his  own  experience. 

The  fragmentary  narrative  of  his  life  afforded 
by  the  Gospels  gives  us  interesting  indications,  not 
only  of  the  various  estimates  formed  concerning 
him  by  the  community,  but  also  of  the  varying  esti- 

1  See  Appendix. 


112     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

mates  formed  concerning  him  by  his  disciples.  The 
Pharisees  scornfully  asked,  "  How  knoweth  this 
man  letters  having  never  learned  ?  "  He  had  never 
studied  the  Rabbinical  books  under  the  theological 
teachers  of  his  time  and  knew  the  traditions  of 
the  church  only  to  condemn  them.  The  Messiah! 
they  said  would  come  out  of  the  unknown;  but  as 
for  this  fellow  —  we  all  know  where  he  came 
from.  A  Nazarene !  Could  any  good  come  out  of 
Nazareth?  Nor  was  Jesus  less  a  puzzle  to  the 
common  people.  They  heard  him  gladly.  They 
were  fascinated  by  the  charm  of  his  personality. 
They  wondered  at  the  words  of  grace  which  flowed 
from  his  lips.  But  Messiah?  Prophet?  Rabbi? 
Nol  Certainly  not  at  the  first  hearing  did  they  so 
judge  him.  He  was  nothing  but  a  peasant.  A 
son  of  the  carpenter  whose  mother  and  brothers 
and  sisters  they  knew  as  their  neighbors  and  com- 
rades. 

After  he  had  taught  and  healed  for  nearly  two 
years  opinions  changed  somewhat,  but  the  puzzle 
continued.  To  some  he  was  John  the  Baptizer, 
risen  from  the  dead,  to  some  Elijah  or  Jere- 
miah  or  some   other  ancient  prophet  come  back 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME        113 

again  to  earth  as  a  forerunner  of  the  Messiah. 
One  of  his  more  intimate  disciples  believed  him 
to  be  the  Messiah,  and  later  it  is  clear  that  the 
other  disciples  held  the  same  opinion,  for  James 
and  John  came  with  their  mother  asking  for  office 
when  he,  their  king,  should  have  established  his 
kingdom.  But  when  he  died  their  faith  died  also. 
They  scattered,  and  some  of  them  went  back  to 
their  fishing.  The  story  of  their  master's  resur- 
rection brought  to  them  by  the  women  seemed  to 
them  as  idle  tales.  Not  until  their  skepticism  was 
overcome  and  they  were  convinced  of  the  reality  of 
the  resurrection  did  their  vanishing  faith  that  their 
Master  was  the  Messiah  return. 

Apparently  the  first  to  believe  and  to  teach  what 
we  now  call  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ  was  Paul. 
His  study  of  the  Old  Testament  during  his  two 
years  in  Arabia  convinced  him  that  the  Messiah 
foretold  in  the  Old  Testament  prophecy  was  the 
Son  of  God,  and  he  came  out  from  his  retirement 
to  preach  in  the  Synagogues  this  new  interpreta- 
tion of  the  ancient  prophets  and  to  follow  it  with 
the  teaching  that  the  Jesus  who  had  been  put  to 
death  and  had  risen  from  the  dead  was  this  Mes- 


114     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

slah.^     This  became  the  message  of  the  apostles. 

The  astonishing  welcome  this  message  received 
from  the  plain  people  in  pagan  lands  gave  life  and 
body  to  the  apostles'  faith.  It  revealed  a  universal 
human  need  to  which  their  message  ministered. 
They  remembered  the  appearances  of  the  Angel  of 
the  Lord  to  patriots  and  prophets  as  narrated  in 
the  sacred  books  of  their  nation,  and  they  began 
to  wonder  if  they  had  not  been  living  with  the  Angel 
of  the  Lord.  They  recalled  that  strange  life  and 
that  extraordinary  character  with  its  puzzling  but 
glorious  self-contradictions:  courageous  but  never 
combative;  gentle  but  never  timid;  masterful  but 
never  self-assertive;  simple  in  tastes  but  never 
ascetic;  sympathetic  with  all  men  but  compromis- 
ing with  none;  rejoicing  in  activity  yet  seeking 
solitude;  pure  in  heart  yet  friend  of  sinners; 
patient  with  wrongs  to  himself  but  indignant  with 
wrongs  to  others ;  vanquishing  a  mob  by  the  magic 
of  his  presence  yet  yielding  himself  up  without 
resistance  to  the  legalized  force  of  an  unjust  gov- 
ernment. They  looked  back  upon  a  life  which 
more  than  fulfilled  the  ideals  of  character  which 

1  Compare  Acts  9 :  20  with  22. 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME         115 

one  of  their  number  portrayed  in  a  prose  poem  in 
praise  of  love.  The  prose  poem  might  well  serve 
as  a  biography  of  Jesus  Christ  by  substituting  for 
the  word  love  his  name.  Christ  "  suffered  long  and 
still  was  kind;  Christ  envied  not,  vaunted  not  him- 
self, was  not  puffed  up,  did  not  behave  himself  un- 
seemly, sought  not  his  own,  was  not  easily  provoked, 
thought  no  evil,  rejoiced  not  in  iniquity  but 
rejoiced  in  the  truth,  bore  all  things,  trusted  all 
things,  endured  all  things." 

Thus  gradually  their  ancient  Jewish  faith  that 
God  reveals  himself  to  man  in  man  took  on  a  new 
meaning.  They  restudied  the  Hebrew  prophets. 
They  recalled  the  prophet's  pen-picture  of  the 
Messiah's  life:  "He  hath  borne  our  griefs  and 
carried  our  sorrows;  he  was  oppressed  and  he  was 
afflicted  yet  he  opened  not  his  mouth."  They 
recalled  Isaiah's  declaration  that  the  Deliverer  of 
Israel  would  be  called  "  Wonderful-Counselor, 
God-Hero,  Father-Everlasting,  Prince  of  Peace."  * 
Was  there  ever  such  a  wonderful-counselor,  divine 
hero,  gracious  and  patient  father,  fountain  and 
giver  of  peace? 

1  See  George  Adam  Smith:  Isaiah  11 :  140. 


ii6     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Their  faith  in  their  master  grew  with  their 
ministry.  By  giving  their  message  they  gained  both 
clearness  of  vision  and  strength  of  conviction.  But 
it  was  not  until  more  than  half  a  century  after 
Christ's  death,  spent  in  interpreting  Christ  and  the 
Christian  life  to  others,  that  John,  the  clearest  in 
vision  of  any  of  the  twelve,  gave  to  their  faith  a 
definition  which,  after  nineteen  centuries,  still  re- 
mains the  clearest  and  most  intelligible  definition  of 
the  Christian's  understanding  of  Christ  which  the 
Christian  Church  possesses :  "  That  which  was  from 
the  beginning,  which  we  have  heard,  which  we  have 
seen  with  our  eyes,  which  we  have  looked  upon,  and 
our  hands  have  handled,  of  the  word  of  Hfe;  .  .  * 
that  which  we  have  seen  and  heard  declare  we  unto 
you  that  ye  also  may  have  fellowship  with  us;  and 
truly  our  fellowship  is  with  the  Father,  and  with 
his  Son  Jesus  Christ."^ 

The  New  Testament  never  affirms  that  Jesus 
Christ  is  God.^  It  never  uses  such  language  as 
that  of  the  Nicene  creed :     "  God  of  God,  Light  of 

1 1  John  I :  I,  3- 

2  The  language  of  Thomas  in  John  20 :  28,  "  My  Lord  and 
my  God,"  is  the  language  of  emotion,  not  of  theological  defini- 
tion. 


I  HAVE  MANIFESTED  THY  NAME        117 

Light,  Very  God  of  Very  God;  Begotten  not  made; 
Being  of  one  substance  with  the  Father."  It  never 
discusses  or  defines  his  metaphysical  relation  to  the 
Infinite  and  Eternal  Spirit.  The  declared  opinions 
of  theologians  on  such  questions  are  their  deduc- 
tions from  the  simpler  and  more  spiritual  faith  of 
the  Apostles.  That  faith  is  expressed  in  such  decla- 
rations as  that  Christ  is  God  manifest  in  the  flesh, 
that  is  in  a  human  life;  that  he  is  such  a  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Word  of  Life  as  can  be  looked  upon,  that 
is,  as  is  possible  in  our  present  earthly  condition;  that 
God  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world  unto  him- 
self;  that  through  Christ,  by  our  understanding  of 
his  spirit,  we  have  access  to  the  Father;  that  thus 
we  can  have  fellowship  with  one  another  and  with 
the  Father  and  with  his  Son  Jesus  Christ. 

It  is  not  my  endeavor  in  this  book  to  define  a  phil- 
osophy but  to  portray  an  experience.  My  faith  in 
God,  in  Jesus  Christ,  in  myself,  in  my  fellow  men 
and  in  immortality  is  one  single  and  indivisible  faith. 
Let  me  see  if  I  can  state  it  simply  and  clearly. 

We  live  in  two  worlds — a  world  of  matter, 
which  is  under  inviolable  law;  a  world  of  the  spirit, 
which  is  free.     God  is  a  spirit,  and  is  the  Father  of 


ii8     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

our  spirits.  Jesus  Christ  is  the  supreme  manifesta- 
tion history  affords  of  what  God  is  and  what  we 
may  become.  In  his  life  of  love,  service  and  sacri- 
fice is  the  supreme  manifestation  of  that  life  of  the 
spirit  which  we  can  share  with  him  and  his  Father, 
an  immortal  life  which  the  decay  of  the  instruments 
it  uses  does  not  and  cannot  destroy. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

I  HAVE  COME  TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  THAT  WHICH 

WAS  LOST 

In  our  study  of  the  life  of  Christ  in  my  Congre- 
gational Bible  class,  I  early  came  upon  a  fact  the 
full  significance  of  which  did  not  at  first  occur  to 
me,  but  which  eventually  led  to  a  radical  reconstruc- 
tion of  my  theology.  I  had  thought  that  Jesus 
Christ  bore  the  punishment  of  our  sins  that  we 
might  be  released  from  that  punishment.  But  I 
found  to  my  surprise  that  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
Christ  nothing  was  said  about  salvation  from  pun- 
ishment and  much  about  deliverance  from  sin.  I 
found  two  phrases  in  the  New  Testament  translated 
forgiveness  of  sin:  one,  literally  translated,  is 
remission  of  sin;  the  other,  deliverance  from  sin. 
The  first  regards  sin  as  a  burden  which  is  taken 
from  man;  the  other,  regards  sin  as  a  despot  from 
which  man  is  deHvered.  The  phrase  remission  of 
sins  is  of  frequent  occurrence;  the  phrase  remission 

119 


120     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

of  punishment  never  occurs  —  not  even  once.  But 
in  classical  Greek  I  could  not  discover  that  the 
phrase  remission  of  sins  ever  occurred;  the  word, 
ordinarily  translated  forgiveness,  signifies  compas- 
sion or  fellow  feeling.  It  began  to  dawn  upon  me 
that  Jesus  Christ  did  not  promise  to  deliver  the 
repentant  sinner  from  penalty  and  did  promise  to 
deliver  him  from  sin. 

The  difference  between  these  two  conceptions  of 
salvation  may  be  made  clear  by  a  simple  illustra- 
tion. Two  companions  in  a  robbery  are  arrested, 
tried,  convicted  and  sentenced  to  ten  years'  impris- 
onment. The  first  by  political  influence  obtains  a 
pardon,  is  released  after  a  few  months'  impris- 
onment, and  returns  to  his  criminal  companions  and 
his  criminal  courses.  The  other  serves  out  his  full 
term,  is  converted,  looks  with  shame  upon  his  past 
life  and  with  aversion  upon  his  past  companions, 
and  goes  out  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  life  in  honest 
and  honorable  service.  One  is  saved  from  his  pun- 
ishment but  not  from  his  sin;  the  other  is  saved 
from  his  sin  but  not  from  his  punishment;  the  pun- 
ishment is  one  means  of  his  salvation. 

It  gradually  became  clear  to  me  that  it  was  this 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  121 

second  salvation  which  Jesus  Christ  offers  to  the 
world  and  which  makes  his  life,  teachings  and 
sacrifice  Glad  Tidings.  His  message  as  understood 
by  his  apostles,  is  interpreted  by  such  verses  as: 

Thou  shalt  call  his  name  Jesus  for  he  shall  save  his 
people  from  their  sins. 

Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  which  taketh  away  the  sin  of 
the  world. 

This  cup  is  the  New  Testament  in  my  blood  which  is 
shed  for  many  for  the  remission  of  sins. 

He  is  faithful  and  just  to  forgive  us  our  sins  (literally 
remit  or  send  away  our  sins)  and  cleanse  us  from  all 
unrighteousness. 

Then  I  went  back  to  the  Old  Testament.  The 
fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah  is  generally  and  justly 
regarded  as  the  chapter  in  the  Prophets  which  more 
than  any  other  foretells  the  character  and  the  mis- 
sion of  the  Messiah,  It  declares  that  the  Messiah 
hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our  sorrows, 
that  he  has  been  wounded  because  of  our  transgres- 
sions and  bruised  because  of  our  iniquities,  and  that 
on  him  the  Lord  has  laid  the  iniquity  of  us  all. 
But  it  does  not  affirm  that  he  has  been  punished 


122     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

because  of  our  transgressions,  nor  that  the  Lord 
has  laid  on  him  the  punishment  of  our  iniquities. 
It  affirms  that  he  has  suffered  and  that  with  his 
stripes  we  are  healed;  but  it  does  not  affirm  that 
with  his  stripes  we  are  dehvered  from  the  penalty 
due  to  our  transgressions. 

I  went  back  to  the  earlier  history  of  Israel.  I 
found  this  truth,  that  God  saves  the  repentant 
sinner  from  his  sins  illustrated  by  a  curious  object 
lesson.  On  the  so-called  Great  Day  of  Atonement 
two  goats  were  brought  out  before  the  Congrega- 
tion of  Israel.  One  was  offered  as  a  sacrifice  to 
Jehovah;  the  sins  of  the  people  were  laid  in  con- 
fession upon  the  head  of  the  other,  which  was  then 
driven  off  into  the  wilderness  and  seen  no  more.  It 
was  the  sins  which  were  sent  away. 

Then  I  turned  to  the  four  Gospels  to  re-read  the 
story  of  Christ's  life  and  teachings.  I  did  not  find 
that  he  anywhere  said  that  he  had  borne  or  would 
bear  for  his  followers  the  consequences  of  their 
misconduct.  I  did  not  find  that  anywhere  he  prom- 
ised that  his  disciples  should  be  relieved  from  the 
consequences  of  their  misconduct.     But  I  did  find 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  123 

him  teaching  explicitly  that  their  sins  did  not 
separate  them  from  God's  love ;  on  the  contrary,  he 
taught  them  that  God  sought  them  in  their  sins  to 
recover  them  from  their  sins. 

Turn  to  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  Luke's  Gospel 
and  read  again  the  three  stories  written  there: — 
the  lost  sheep,  the  lost  coin,  the  lost  son.  What  is 
the  meaning  of  these  stories?  Is  it  not  that  our 
Father  does  not  wait  for  us  to  seek  him;  that  he 
comes  seeking  us;  that,  as  Paul  has  expressed  it, 
God  has  loved  us  while  we  were  dead  in  sins;  and 
as  John  has  expressed  it,  "  Herein  is  love,  not  that 
we  loved  God  but  that  he  loved  us."  Our  sins  hide 
God  from  us,  but  they  do  not  hide  us  from  God. 
As  sickness  attracts  the  physician  to  the  hospital, 
as  ignorance  attracts  the  bom  teacher  to  the  pupil, 
as  the  negro  camp  attracted  General  Armstrong  to 
Hampton,  Virginia,  as  the  ignorance  and  supersti- 
tion of  the  tribes  in  Africa  attracted  Livingston  to 
the  Dark  Continent,  so  our  sins  attract  our  Father 
to  us.  "  People  don't  love  you  when  you  are 
naughty,"  said  a  would-be  teacher  to  a  naughty 
child.     "  But     mother     does,"     was     his     reply. 


124     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

"  Mother  does."  And  this  mother's  heart  interprets 
the  heart  of  Him  who  dwells  in  and  inspires  the 
love  of  the  mother. 

What  Jesus  taught  by  his  parables,  he  taught  by 
his  life.  He  went  seeking  the  lost,  that  he  might 
save  them,  not  from  their  punishment  but  from  their 
sins.  In  the  two  instances  in  which  he  saved  per- 
sons from  the  consequencs  of  their  sin  it  was  made 
clear  that  he  did  so  only  that  he  might  save  them 
from  their  sin.^  He  did  not  wait,  as  we  too  often 
do,  for  sinners  to  come  to  him  in  the  synagogue  or 
the  temple.  He  went  where  they  were.  He  spoke 
to  them  in  figures  drawn  from  their  everyday  life 
which  they  could  understand.  He  opened  doors  of 
hope  for  those  against  whom  the  world  and  the 
church  had  closed  all  doors  of  hope  He  accepted 
their  invitations,  shared  in  their  festivities,  com- 
forted them  in  their  sorrows  and  inspired  in  them 
new  hopes  and  new  purposes.  And  his  message  to 
them  was  ever  the  same :  "  Go,  and  sin  no  more." 
To  Jesus  a  lost  soul  was  a  soul  not  yet  found,  and 
his  life  and  his  teaching  interpreted  the  spirit  of  his 

1  Johns:  14.8:11. 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  125 

Father  who  is  seeking  and  will  seek  the  lost  until  he 
find  them. 

Thus  gradually  I  came  to  learn  one  great  differ- 
ence between  the  Christian  form  of  religious  life 
and  all  other  forms.  Other  world  religions  repre- 
sent man  as  seeking  God;  Christianity  is  the  only 
religion  which  represents  God  as  seeking  man. 

Nor  did  Christ  wait  for  repentance.  By  his 
character  even  more  than  by  his  words,  he  inspired 
in  men  both  sorrow  for  the  past  and  aspirations  for 
the  future.  His  life  was  a  continual  illustration  of 
the  truth  enunciated  by  one  of  his  disciples:  "the 
goodness  of  God  calleth  thee  to  repentance."  He 
did  not  wait  for  the  corrupt  tax  gatherers  to  reform 
their  ways  before  he  accepted  their  invitations  to  a 
feast.  He  accepted  those  invitations  as  an  indica- 
tion of  their  desire  for  a  better  life,  and,  to  the 
complaints  of  his  critics,  replied,  "  They  that  be 
well  need  not  a  physician  but  they  that  are  sick." 

A  woman  of  the  town  came  in  as  a  spectator  to 
the  house  where  he  was  dining.  Something  in  his 
words  awakened  in  her  a  spirit  of  sorrow  for  the 
past  and  of  aspiration  for  the  future.     Her  tears 


126     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

fell  upon  his  unsandalled  feet  stretched  out  behind 
him  as  he  reclined  at  the  table.  She  knelt  to  wipe 
away  the  tears  with  the  tresses  of  her  hair;  then, 
unresisted,  kissed  his  feet  and  anointed  them  with 
the  ointment  which  such  women  constantly  carried 
with  them.  Her  hands  were  not  clean  nor  her  heart 
pure.  But  she  had  some  desire  for  clean  hands  and 
a  pure  heart,  and  Christ  asked  nothing  more,  but 
turned  to  her  with  the  message,  "  Thy  sins  are 
forgiven." 

He  was  one  day  passing  through  Jerusalem, 
city  of  priests,  city  of  tax  gatherers.  The  Roman 
system  of  taxation  was  such  that  no  man  could 
be  a  tax  gatherer  and  not  be  an  oppressor  of  the 
people.  He  was  part  of  an  organized  system  of 
corruption  and  oppression.  One  of  these  tax  gath- 
erers who  was  short  of  stature  climbed  a  tree 
to  see  the  Rabbi  whose  fame  gathered  a  following 
crowd  about  him  wherever  he  went.  Christ  waited 
for  no  expression  of  repentance,  but  called  to 
Zaccheus  to  come  down.  I  will  be  your  guest 
to-day,  he  said.  He  offered  his  friendship  without 
waiting  for  any  expression  of  repentance  and  by 
his  friendship  inspired  the  repentance.     Before  he 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  127 

left  the  tax  gatherer's  house  Zaccheus  had  promised 
to  restore  fourfold  to  those  whom  he  had  plundered 
by  false  accusation  and  to  give  half  of  what 
remained  to  the  poor. 

Self-confident  Peter,  who  had  resented  Christ's 
warning,  followed  him  to  the  Court  of  Caiaphas 
and  there  denied  that  he  knew  the  Master,  who 
was  on  trial  fer  his  life.  Jesus  did  not  wait  until 
Peter  went  out  and  wept  bitterly;  but  as  he  passed 
by  to  his  trial  and  his  death  he  looked  with  a  pene- 
trating glance  of  love  upon  his  disciple,  and  it  was 
this  look  of  love  which  awakened  repentance  in  Pe- 
ter's heart  and  brought  bitter  tears  to  his  eyes. 

Repentance  is  not  the  condition  of  divine  love 
and  mercy;  it  is  the  condition  of  divine  forgiveness 
because  an  unrepentant  heart  is  bolted  against  the 
entrance  of  forgiveness.  It  is  not  that  God  is 
unwilling  to  forgive;  but  forgiveness  is  deliverance 
from  sin,  and  it  is  impossible  to  lift  sin  off  from  a 
man  who  desires  to  hold  on  to  it.  God  says  to 
every  man,  "  Let  go  your  sin  and  I  will  lift  it  off  "  ; 
but  if  the  man  will  not  let  his  sin  go  it  cannot  be 
hfted  off. 

Is  not  this  deliverance  from  sin  that  which  in 


128     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

our  better  moments  we  desire  for  our  children,  our 
homes,  our  nation?  Do  we  not  desire  for  our 
children  that  they  should  be  honest,  truthful,  brave? 
That  their  lips  shall  be  unstained  by  profanity,  their 
hands  clean  from  greed,  their  hearts  unpolluted  by 
foul  imaginings  and  base  desires  ?  Do  we  not  desire 
for  our  homes  that,  whether  they  are  rich  or  poor 
in  their  furnishings,  peace  and  good  will  shall  abide 
in  them?  Do  we  not  wish  for  America  that  she 
shall  be  not  merely  a  nation  of  great  cities  and  great 
railways,  but  of  freemen  living  together  in  accord 
under  the  protection  of  a  just  government?  Not 
^  deliverance  from  the  sorrows  which  sin  brings  but 
from  the  sin  itself  we  crave :  that  our  boys  be  saved, 
not  from  headache  but  from  drunkenness;  our 
homes  not  from  poverty  but  from  quarreling;  our 
nation  not  from  the  wounds  of  war  but  from  the 
shame  of  cowardice. 

Nature  in  a  parable  teaches  us  what  the  New 
Testament  teaches  in  explicit  language.  Emerson 
says,  "  Take  what  figure  you  will,  its  exact  value, 
nor  more  nor  less,  still  returns  to  you.  Every 
secret  is  told,  every  crime  is  punished,  every  virtue 
rewarded,  every  wrong  redressed,  in  silence  and 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  129 

certainty."  This  is  but  a  half  truth,  and  a  half  truth 
is  generally  a  dangerous  error.  It  is  true  that 
nature's  laws  can  never  be  violated  with  impunity, 
she  has  no  favorites,  she  is  immutable,  inexorable. 
Her  laws  written  in  the  constitution  of  the  world 
of  matter  and  in  the  souls  of  men  are  never  set 
aside.  She  does  not  remit  the  consequences  of  dis- 
regarding her  laws.  But  she  does  repair  the  hurt. 
When  I  was  a  boy,  in  careless  climbing  I  broke  my 
arm.  Nature  did  not  say,  This  is  a  little  boy,  he 
meant  no  harm,  and  I  will  not  break  his  arm.  But 
when  the  doctor  set  the  arm  and  put  it  in  splints, 
then  nature  began  to  knit  the  bone  together. 
Nature  punishes  but  it  also  repairs.  When  the  dys- 
peptic ceases  to  violate  the  laws  of  health  the 
stomach  begins  to  repair  the  ravages  which  he  has 
made  in  it;  when  the  drunkard  abandons  his  cups 
the  body  begins  to  cast  out  the  alcoholized  tissues 
and  bring  new  healthy  ones  to  take  their  place. 
And  if  nature  is  unable  unaided  to  repair  the  wrong 
there  are  curative  agencies  in  the  world  outside  ready 
to  give  their  aid. 

This  law  of  healing  written  in  material  nature  is 
written  scarcely  less  clearly  in  the  nature  of  man. 


130     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

When  Christ  bids  us  pray  Forgive  us  our  debts  as 
we  forgive  our  debtors,  he  does  not  make  our  for- 
giveness of  others  the  standard  to  which  God  con- 
forms his  forgiveness.  "  What  man  is  there  of 
you,"  he  asks,  "  of  whom  if  his  son  asks  bread 
will  he  give  him  a  stone?  If  ye  then  being  evil 
know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your  children 
how  much  more  shall  your  Father  which  is  in 
heaven  give  good  things  to  him  that  ask  them." 
Similarly  in  this  prayer  he  bids  us  remember  that, 
imperfect  as  we  are,  we  forgive  one  another;  much 
more  then  may  we  with  faith  pray  that  our  Heavenly 
Father  will  forgive  us.  It  is  true  that  he  adds,  "If 
ye  forgive  not  men  their  trespasses  neither  will  your 
Father  forgive  your  trespasses."  But  this  is  not 
because  the  Father  will  shut  his  heart  up  against  us 
if  we  shut  up  our  hearts  against  one  another.  It  is 
because  forgiveness  of  sin  is  deliverance  from  sin 
and  the  unforgiving  soul  is  not  willing  to  be  deliv- 
ered from  its  relentless  hatred. 

The  Gospel,  then,  reduced  to  its  simplest  form, 
may  be  stated  thus:  God  wishes  me  to  be  his  son. 
Do  I  wish  God  to  be  my  Heavenly  Father?  If 
this  is  what  I  really  wish,  he  will  take  me  as  I  am 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  131 

and  make  me  what  he  wishes  me  to  be.  All  that 
he  asks  is  that  I  should  wish  to  be  what  he  wishes 
me  to  be.  Faith  is  just  the  desire  to  be  like  God ; 
it  is  reaching  out  the  hand  and  taking  hold  of  the 
stretched-out  hand  of  God. 

There  seem  to  me  to  be  a  great  many  Christians 
in  the  church  who  do  not  understand  this  Gospel 
as  well  as  the  Hebrew  Psalmist  did,  although  he 
wrote  some  centuries  before  the  life,  teaching  and 
sacrifice  of  Jesus  Christ  had  made  it  clear.  Listen 
to  him : 

Delight  thyself  also  in  Jehovah; 

And  he  will  give  thee  the  desires  of  thy  heart. 

Commit  thy  way  unto  Jehovah ; 

Trust  also  in  him,  and  he  will  bring  it  to  pass. 

And  he  will  make  thy  righteousness  to.  go  forth  as  the 

light. 
And  thy  justice  as  the  noonday. 

Delight  yourself  In  God.  That  is  all.  Want  to 
want  him;  desire  to  have  him;  when  you  read  the 
life  of  Christ  say.  Yes,  that  is  the  kind  of  life  I 
would  like  to  live,  that  is  the  kind  of  man  I  would 
like  to  be;  Lord,  make  me  like  him.  That  is  all, 
absolutely  all. 


132     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

I  do  not  know  where  this  truth  is  more  beautifully 
told  than  in  Henry  Ward  Beecher's  graphic  descrip- 
tion of  his  Christian  experience. 

I  was  a  child  of  teaching  and  prayer;  I  was  reared  in 
the  household  of  faith;  I  knew  the  Catechism  as  it  was 
taught;  I  was  instructed  in  the  Scriptures  as  they  were 
expounded  from  the  pulpit  and  read  by  me;  and  yet,  till 
after  I  was  twenty-one  years  old,  I  groped  without  the 
knowledge  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus,  I  know  not  what 
the  tablets  of  eternity  have  written  down,  but  I  think 
that  when  I  stand  in  Zion  and  before  God,  the  brightest 
thing  I  shall  look  back  upon  will  be  that  blessed  morning 
in  May  when  it  pleased  God  to  reveal  to  my  wandering 
soul  the  idea  that  it  was  his  nature  to  love  a  man  in  his 
sins  for  the  sake  of  helping  him  out  of  them ;  that  he  did 
not  do  it  out  of  compliment  to  Christ,  or  to  a  law,  or  a 
plan  of  salvation,  but  from  the  fullness  of  his  great 
heart,  that  he  was  a  Being  not  made  mad  by  sin,  but 
sorry,  that  he  was  not  furious  with  wrath  toward  the 
sinner,  but  pitied  him  —  in  short,  that  he  felt  toward  me 
as  my  mother  felt  toward  me,  to  whose  eyes  my  wrong- 
doing brought  tears,  who  never  pressed  me  so  close  to 
her  as  when  I  had  done  wrong,  and  who  would  fain  with 
her  yearning  love  lift  me  out  of  trouble.  And  when  I 
found  that  Jesus  Christ  had  such  a  disposition,  and  that 
when  his  disciples  did  wrong  he  drew  them  closer  to  him 
than  he  did  before  —  and  when  pride,  and  jealousy,  and 
rivalry,  and  all  vulgar  and  worldly  feelings  rankled  in 
their  bosoms,  he  opened  his  heart  to  them  as  a  medicine 
to  heal  these  infirmities :  when  I  found  that  it  was  Christ's 
nature  to  lift  men  out  of  weakness  to  strength,  out  of 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  133 

impurity  to  goodness,  out  of  everything  low  and  debasing 
to  superiority,  I  felt  that  I  had  found  a  God.  I  shall 
never  forget  the  feelings  with  which  I  walked  forth  that 
May  morning.  The  golden  pavements  will  never  feel  to 
my  feet  as  then  the  grass  felt  to  them;  and  the  singing 
of  the  birds  in  the  woods  —  for  I  roamed  in  the  woods 
—  was  cacophonous  to  the  sweet  music  of  my  thoughts; 
and  there  were  no  forms  in  the  universe  which  seemed  to 
me  graceful  enough  to  represent  the  Being,  a  conception 
of  whose  character  had  just  dawned  on  my  mind.  I  felt, 
when  I  had  with  the  Psalmist  called  upon  the  heavens, 
the  earth,  the  mountains,  the  streams,  the  floods,  the  birds, 
the  beasts,  and  universal  being  to  praise  God,  that  I  had 
called  upon  nothing  that  could  praise  him  enough  for 
the  revelation  of  such  a  nature  as  that  in  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ. 

All  this  may  be  true,  and  yet  the  past  remains. 
God  may  not  remember  your  sin,  but  you  cannot 
forget  it.  He  may  not  punish  you,  but  how  can 
you  escape  your  own  self-punishment?  His  prom- 
ise may  remove  your  fear  of  the  future,  but  not 
your  sorrow  for  the  past.  You  shot  a  poisoned 
arrow  into  the  heart  of  your  wife.  You  cannot 
draw  it  out :  nor  can  he.  You  did  a  dishonest  thing : 
you  cannot  undo  it:  nor  can  he.  You  can  pay 
the  money  back,  but  you  cannot  undo  the  dishon- 
esty.    The  past  is  past :  not  even  God  can  change  it. 


134     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

"  The  Moving  Finger  writes :  and  having  writ 
Moves  on:  nor  all  your  Piety  nor  Wit 
Shall  lure  it  back  to  cancel  half  a  line. 
Nor  all  your  Tears  wash  out  a  word  of  it." 

That  is  true.  Not  even  Almighty  God  can  make 
the  past  other  than  it  is.  But  God  can  bring  good 
out  of  our  evil,  and  he  often  does.  John  B.  Gough 
once  said  to  me,  "  I  never  come  into  a  parlor  where 
ladies  and  gentlemen  are  gathered  to  meet  me  with- 
out thinking  they  are  saying  to  themselves,  Here 
comes  the  man  who  has  twice  had  delirium  tremens ; 
and  I  never  dare  to  share  in  a  communion  service 
where  fermented  wine  is  used  lest  its  fragrance 
should  prove  to  me  an  irresistible  temptation."  He 
carried  the  effects  of  his  sin  with  him  to  his  dying 
day;  but  he  was  saved  from  the  sin  of  drunkenness 
and  the  very  painful  memory  of  his  past  made  him 
all  the  more  effective  as  an  apostle  of  temperance. 
The  greatest  single  crime  of  history  was  perpetrated 
when  Judas,  Caiphas  and  Pilate  conspired  to  slay 
the  innocent.  But  out  of  that  conspiracy  the 
world's  redemption  was  wrought. 

The  history  of  America  illustrates  this  truth  in  a 
very  striking  manner.     The  Civil  War  was  an  awful 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  135 

tragedy,  and  those  who  are  responsible  for  bringing 
it  on,  whether  by  their  ambition,  their  recklessness, 
their  cowardice,  or  their  carelessness,  were  guilty  of 
an  awful  sin.  And  yet,  on  looking  back  we  can  see 
now  what  we  could  not  see  then.  Before  the  Civil 
War  a  great  chasm  had  been  opened  between  the 
North  and  the  South.  The  union  of  States  was  one 
of  law,  not  one  of  the  spirit.  The  North  despised 
the  South  as  a  community  of  braggarts;  the  South 
despised  the  North  as  a  community  of  mere  money 
makers.  Each  said,  The  other  will  never  fight. 
But  the  four  years  of  bloody  war  created  in  each 
section  a  respect  for  the  other  section  not  known 
before,  and  out  of  a  conflict  whose  wounds  we  had 
thought  could  never  be  healed  came  forth  a  fra- 
ternal fellowship  which  we  never  knew  before. 

The  memory  of  our  sins  will  remain.  We  shall 
carry  it  with  us  even  to  heaven;  but  the  Apostle 
John  tells  us  that  it  will  add  a  new  song  to  the 
celestial  choral :  "  And  they  sung  a  new  song,  say-  | 
ing,  Thou  art  worthy  to  take  the  book,  and  to  open 
the  seals  thereof:  for  thou  wast  slain  and  hast 
redeemed  us  to  God  by  thy  blood,  out  of  every 
kindred  and  tongue  and  people  and  nation."     They 


130      WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

remembered  their  sins  in  remembering  their  redemp- 
tion from  sin,  as  Israel  remembered  the  oppressions 
they  had  endured  in  Egypt  in  remembering  their 
deHverance  and  their  Deliverer.  In  both  cases  the 
song  they  sung  was  a  "  New  Song."  And  we  need 
not  wait  for  heaven  to  sing  it. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  memories  of  the  past  which 
are  burdens  to  us;  the  present  and  the  future  are 
burdens  also.  "  We  have  done  the  things  we  ought 
not  to  have  done,  and  we  have  left  undone  the 
things  we  ought  to  have  done,  and  there  is  no  health 
in  us."  The  evil  is  still  here.  And  the  conscious- 
ness that  it  is  here  fills  us  with  apprehension  for 
the  future.  This  sense  of  evil  in  us,  this  appre- 
hension of  sins  into  which  it  will  bring  us,  an  appre- 
hension so  great  as  to  lead  sometimes  to  despair, 
this  is  the  last  and  greatest  enemy  of  all.  And  to 
meet  this  enemy  with  courage  born  of  hope,  the 
God  of  the  Old  Testament  and  of  the  New  equips  us. 

Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  as  white  as 

snow; 
Though  they  be  red  like  crimson,  they  shall  be  as  wool. 

What  shall  be  white  like  snow?     The  sins.     What 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  137 

shall   be   as   wool?     The   sins.     Is    this   possible? 
Can  our  sins  become  virtues? 

It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  there  is  no  good 
in  man.  It  would  be  truer  to  say  that  there  is  no 
evil  in  him.  For  there  is  nothing  in  man  which  is 
inherently  evil ;  nothing  which  cannot  be  directed  to 
a  good  purpose  and  made  to  serve  a  beneficent  end. 
Vice  is  virtue  misplaced.  Appetite?  Is  that  a 
vice?  There  are  some  readers  of  this  book  who 
would  better  eat  less  than  they  do;  but  there  are 
others  whose  doctors  wish  them  to  eat  more  than 
they  do.  Some  have  too  much  appetite,  and  some 
not  appetite  enough.  Appetite  is  a  virtue;  it  is  the 
misdirection  and  misuse  of  appetite  which  is  a  vice. 
Approbativeness,  is  that  a  sin?  A  man  without 
any  care  for  the  opinions  of  others  is  a  man  without 
sympathy ;  he  cannot  understand  other  men.  Pride, 
is  that  a  sin?  A  man  without  pride!  Such  a 
creature  is  not  a  man;  he  has  not  a  vertebrate 
column.  Acquisitiveness,  is  that  a  sin?  Acquisi- 
tiveness, which  is  a  seed  of  all  manner  of  evil,  is 
also  a  seed  of  all  manner  of  good.  It  drives  the 
busy  wheels  of  industry  and  sets  us  all  working. 
What  our  Father  says  is  this:     Not  only  will  I 


138     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

allow  no  sin  you  have  committed  to  separate  you 
from  me;  not  only  will  I  pluck  the  evil  out  of  your 
evil  doing  and  make  it  bring  forth  good ;  but  I  will 
make  the  sin  in  you  a  virtue  if  you  will  let  me. 

Moses  has  been  called  the  meekest  man  in  history. 
But  when  he  brought  the  Egyptian  to  the  ground 
with  a  single  blow  and  killed  him,  I  do  not  believe 
Moses  was  the  meekest  man  on  earth.  What  is 
meekness?  Meekness  is  passion  tamed.  And  be- 
cause Moses  had  this  power  of  passion,  he  had  in 
him  a  power  of  patience.  Patience  involves,  first  of 
all,  a  power  to  feel,  and  secondly,  the  power  to  keep 
that  feeling  in  control.  Paul,  brought  up  as  a 
Pharisee,  never,  as  his  letters  clearly  show,  lost  his 
pride;  but  it  was  so  purified,  transfigured,  inspired 
by  a  new  purpose  and  directed  to  a  new  object  that 
what  had  been  a  vice  became  a  virtue.  It  was  no 
longer  pride  in  himself  and  his  own  righteousness, 
but  pride  in  his  Leader  and  in  the  Cause  to  which 
he  had  consecrated  himself.  He  became  a  leader" 
of  a  despised  sect  and  the  follower  of  a  convict 
condemned  first  by  a  Jewish  and  then  by  a  Roman 
Tribunal,  and  put  to  the  most  ignoble  death  known 
to  that  age.     And  even  in  this  outcast  sect  Paul  was 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  139 

looked  upon  with  suspicion  by  his  co-religionists  as 
a  heretic.  But  never  did  he  apolgize ;  never  did  he 
take  a  defensive  attitude.  He  gloried  in  being  a 
Jew,  gloried  in  being  a  Christian  Jew,  gloried  in 
his  Convict-Leader,  gloried  in  the  cross  on  which 
that  Leader  had  been  put  to  death.  His  pride  be- 
came an  instrument  of  power  and  an  equipment  for 
service.     His  scarlet  sin  became  white  as  snow. 

Nor  is  this  transformation  of  character  wrought 
by  the  spirit  of  Jesus,Christ  merely  in  the  individual : 
it  is  also  social  and  organic.  The  great  upward  and 
forward  movements  in  human  history  are  divinely 
inspired  movements;  the  Democratic  movement, 
the  Emancipation  movement,  the  Temperance  move- 
ment, the  present  movement  towards  international 
justice  and  peace  are  all  parts  of  that  greater 
movement  which  we  call  Christianity.  God  is 
re-creating  the  world. 

My  realization  of  the  fact  that  Jesus  Christ  does 
not  promise  remission  of  penalty  but  does  promise 
remission  of  sin  revolutionized  my  theology  because 
it  revolutionized  my  religious  experience.  Let  me 
here  in  five  definitions  briefly  define  that  revolution. 

Salvation  no  longer  means  to  me  deliverance  from 


140     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Hell  and  admission  to  Heaven;  it  means  deliver- 
ance from  Sin.  Exemption  from  penalty  without 
deliverance  from  sin  would  not  be  salvation.  If  a 
good  man  were  to  go  to  Hell  and  retain  his  good- 
ness he  would  be  saved.  If  a  bad  man  were  to  go 
to  Heaven  and  retain  his  evil  nature,  he  would  be 
lost.  Heaven  must  be  in  us  —  Hell  is  in  some. 
The  Gospel  is  not  the  good  news  that  guilty  men 
may  be  saved  from  punishment,  but  the  good  news 
that  guilty  men  may  be  made  virtuous.  In  one 
word,  Salvation  is  character. 

Justification  by  faith  no  longer  means  to  me  that 
Christ  has  sufifered  the  penalties  of  my  sins  and 
therefore  if  I  accept  his  sacrifice  God  will  treat 
me  as  though  I  were  innocent  although  I  am  guilty ; 
it  means  that  Jesus  Christ  offers  himself  to  me  as 
my  divine  companion  and  if  I  accept  his  compan- 
ionship I  can  be  made  virtuous  although  I  have 
been  guilty. 

Atonement  no  longer  means  to  me  that  Christ  has 
made  a  reparation  to  God  for  the  wrong  I  have 
done  and  therefore  God  is  reconciled  to  me.  It 
means  that  Christ  has  by  his  life  and  teaching  inter- 
preted  God   to  me  and  by  his  personal  presence 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  141 

inspires  in  me  the  will  to  do  my  Father's  will  and 
so  has  reconciled  me  to  God. 

Regeneration  does  not  mean  to  me  a  new  faculty 
miraculously  given  to  man  by  some  magic  formula, 
as  baptism,  or  by  some  supernatural  experience  for 
which  man  must  wait.  In  every  normal  man  is 
the  capacity  for  goodness  and  truth,  for  love  and 
service,  for  hope  and  joy.  But  this  sleeping  capac- 
ity is  naught  unless  it  is  awakened  into  life.  It  is 
a  seed,  but  a  lifeless  seed  until  it  is  given  life  by  a 
divine  powder  above  itself.  So  I  might  say  to  the 
seeds  in  my  garden  bed,  You  can  never  come  into 
the  kingdom  of  light  and  life  and  beauty  until  you 
are  born  from  above,  and  all  the  while  God's  sun, 
which  shines  alike  on  the  evil  and  the  good,  is 
waiting  to  give  them  life. 

Incarnation  means  to  me  more  than  that  the  Spirit 
of  God  dwelt  unrecognized  by  the  world  centuries 
ago  for  a  few  years  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth;  it  also 
means  to  me  that  the  same  Spirit  still  dwells  in  the 
world,  carrying  on  now  with  the  followers  of  Jesus 
the  work  of  serving  and  saving  men  which  the  same 
Spirit  carried  on  with  Jesus  then.  Incarnation  to 
me  is  not  merely  an  historical  episode;   it   is  an 


142     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

eternal  fact.  "  Behold  I  stand  at  the  door  and 
knock;  if  any  man  will  hear  my  voice  and  open 
the  door  I  will  come  unto  him  and  will  sup  with 
him  and  he  with  me."  This  figure  interprets  to 
me  the  spiritual  aspirations  of  mankind.  God  is 
love.  Where  God  is,  love  is.  And  love  is  every- 
where: a  universal  presence,  a  mighty  though  not 
resistless  power  in  human  life. 

We  look  back  into  the  past  for  a  memory  of  a 
God  that  was,  or  forward  into  the  future  for  a  hope 
of  a  God  that  is  to  be;  and  all  the  while  God  stands 
at  the  door  and  knocks  for  admission  to  our  lives. 
Love  is  God  knocking. 

Love  knocks  at  the  heart  of  the  expectant 
mother,  that  mother-love  may  interpret  God  to  her. 
Love  knocks  at  the  heart  of  the  boys  and  girls  at 
school  and  college,  that  friendship  may  interpret 
God  to  them.  Love  knocks  at  the  heart  of  the 
youths  and  the  maidens,  that  a  love  as  strong  as 
death,  which  many  waters  cannot  quench  nor  floods 
drown,  and  which  is  of  infinitely  more  value  to 
them  than  all  their  possessions,  may  interpret  God 
to  them.  Love  knocks  at  the  door  of  the  mill  and 
the  mine  that  by  making  labor  a  service  love  may 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  143 

interpret  the  spirit  of  him  who  is  the  Maker  of 
heaven  and  earth.  Love  knocks  at  the  door  of 
sorrow,  that  human  S3anpathy  may  interpret  to  the 
mourner  him  who  for  our  sake  became  a  man  of 
sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief.  Love  knocks 
at  the  prison  doors,  that  human  forgiveness  may 
interpret  him  who  came  to  seek  and  to  save  the  lost. 
And  love  inspires  the  faith  and  hope  which  looks 
up  from  the  hour  of  death  and  forward  to  the 
day  of  judgment  not  with  dread,  but  with  rejoicing, 
and  sings:  Let  the  heavens  rejoice  and  the  earth 
be  glad,  let  the  sea  roar  and  the  fullness  thereof, 
the  world  and  they  that  dwell  therein;  for  Love  is 
coming;  he  is  coming  to  judge  the  world  with 
righteousness  and  the  people  with  his  truth. 

While  I  was  engaged  in  writing  this  chapter  the 
life  of  the  Reverend  Dr.  Daniel  Bliss  was  published 
and  a  copy  was  sent  to  me  by  its  author.  Dr.  Bliss's 
eldest  son.  Dr.  Bliss  entered  the  missionary  service 
of  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  For- 
eign Missions  in  1856  and  remained  in  that  service 
until  his  death  in  the  ninety-third  year  of  his  age, 
in  19 16.  For  thirty-six  years  he  was  the  active 
and  honored   President   of   the   Syrian   Protestant 


144     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

College  in  Beirut,  Syria.  Toward  the  end  of  his 
life  he  wrote  some  reminiscences  for  his  children 
and  grandchildren.  These  reminiscences,  parts  of 
which  are  included  in  the  life  by  his  son,  contain 
the  following  statement  in  which  he  defines  with 
characteristic  clearness  his  faith,  which  both  inter- 
prets and  confirms  the  faith  which  in  this  chapter  I 
have  been  endeavoring  to  depict: 

"  Some  people  have  no  clear  idea  in  matters  of  religion 
what  is  caiise  and  what  is  effect.  Some  seem  to  think 
that  God  loves  mankind  because  Christ  came  and  died 
for  them  Just  the  opposite  is  true,  for  God  so  loved  the 
world  that  He  gave  His  only  Son  to  us.  Some  think 
that  God  loves  us  because  we  love  Him.  The  opposite 
is  true:  we  love  God  because  He  first  loved  us.  Some 
seem  to  think  that  the  Atonement  made  a  change  in  God's 
attitude  towards  us ;  God  changeth  not,  and  the  Atonement 
was  made  not  to  change  Him  but  to  change  us.  Some 
seem  to  think  that  God  was  angry  and  Christ  came  to 
reconcile  Him;  Paul  says  the  opposite  is  true:  God  was 
in  Christ  reconciling  the  world  to  Himself." 

In  his  father's  biography  the  son  says  that  his 
father  inherited  the  Calvinistic  tradition.  Three- 
quarters  of  a  century  spent  by  him  in  Bible  study 
and  Christian  teaching  in  Syria  and  three-quarters 
of  a  century  spent  by  me  in  Bible  study  and  Chris- 


TO  SEEK  AND  TO  SAVE  145 

tiaii  teaching  in  America  brought  us  both  to  su1> 
stantially  the  same  understanding  and  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Gospel  message.  And  it  is  interesting 
to  note  how  in  spirit  this  expression  of  the  father's 
faith  tallies  with  that  of  a  younger  son,  Howard 
Bliss,  for  four  years  my  associate  in  Plymouth 
Church,  Brooklyn,  and  subsequently,  and  until  his 
death  in  1920,  his  father's  successor  in  the  College 
Presidency.^  In  the  interpretation  of  the  Gospel 
furnished  in  this  chapter  there  is  nothing  unique. 
It  is  only  the  expression  of  a  conviction  to  which 
many  of  the  most  devout  and  earnest  disciples  of 
Christ  and  students  of  his  teaching  have  been 
coming  during  the  last  half  century. 

If  it  is  true  that  Jesus  Christ  came  not  to  recon- 
cile God  to  the  world  but  to  reconcile  the  world 
to  God,  not  to  redeem  men  from  punishment  but  to 
redeem  them  from  sin,  what  is  the  meaning  of  his 
sacrifice?  Has  it  any  meaning?  To  a  considera- 
tion of  that  question  I  devote  the  next  chapter. 
1  See  Epilogue  at  close  of  th®  volume. 


CHAPTER  IX 

I  CAME  TO   GIVE  MY   LIFE  A  RANSOM   FOR  MANY 

No  reader  will  understand  this  chapter  unless  he 
has  first  understood  what  I  have  endeavored  to 
make  clear  in  the  preceding  chapter:  Salvation  is 
not  deliverance  from  punishment  but  deliverance 
from  sin.  "The  wages  of  sin  is  death:  but  the 
gift  of  God  is  eternal  life  in  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord." 
As  the  sun  drives  out  the  darkness  by  the  gift  of 
light,  as  the  doctor  drives  out  disease  by  the  gift  of 
health,  as  the  teacher  drives  out  ignorance  by  the 
gift  of  knowledge,  so  God  drives  out  sin  by  the 
gift  of  his  own  life.  We  are  saved  not  by  impu- 
tation but  by  impartation  of  righteousness;  not  by 
being  treated  as  though  we  were  innocent  when  we 
are  guilty,  but  by  being  made  virtuous  though  we 
were  guilty.  In  the  language  of  Paul,  we  are  "  con- 
formed to  the  image  of  God's  Son  that  he  may  be 

the  first  born  among  many  brethren." 

146 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  147 

The  gift  of  life  can  never  be  conferred  except 
through  self-sacrifice. 

The  mother  who  bore  us  laid  down  her  life  in 
order  that  she  might  give  a  new  life  to  the  world. 
I  do  not  suppose  that  any  man  can  comprehend  the 
strange  feeling  of  hope  and  fear  which  struggles 
wathin  the  awe-struck  heart  of  the  expectant  mother. 
She  goes  down  to  the  brink  of  that  mysterious 
stream  which  is  both  the  river  of  life  and  the  river 
of  death,  and  knows  not  whether  the  ferryman  will 
come  to  carry  her  away  to  the  unknown  land  or  out 
of  the  unknown  land  will  bring  a  new  life  to  her. 
When  the  new  born  child  is  laid  in  her  arms  her 
travail  pain  is  not  over.  Just  begun  is  that  mother's 
experience,  which  is  at  once  the  greatest  fear  and 
the  greatest  hope,  the  greatest  sorrow  and  the 
greatest  joy  of  human  life.  Not  only  in  those  few 
hours  of  physical  anguish  does  she  suffer;  her  life 
is  one  long,  joyful  self-sacrifice  —  joyful  because 
the  greatest  joy  of  life  is  the  joy  of  self-sacrifice. 
She  daily  lays  down  her  life  for  her  child.  She 
delights  in  menial  services  rendered  to  him  which 
she  has  never  before  rendered  to  any  one;  she 
abandons   the   society   in   which   market   place   she 


148     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

was  wont  to  exchange  services  of  good  will,  and 
devotes  herself  to  the  society  of  the  babe  who  takes 
all  and  gives  nothing.  The  songs  she  sings  to  her 
babe  are  her  only  music;  her  chief  literature  is  the 
stories  she  reads  to  the  growing  child ;  her  most 
enticing  games  are  those  she  plays  with  him;  her 
most  instructive  studies  are  those  in  which  she  is 
his  leader.  She  fears  nothing  so  much  as  that  he 
may  become  estranged  from  her  and  from  his  home 
and  fall  into  vicious  habits;  she  hopes  for  nothing 
so  much  as  that  he  may  grow  up  to  be  gentle  and 
strong,  just  and  generous,  courageous  and  wise;  and 
she  experiences  a  remorse  in  his  incipient  vices  far 
greater  than  any  he  will  ever  know,  unless  in  later 
years  the  memory  of  her  tears  comes  out  of  the 
past  to  teach  him.  Motherhood  is  one  long  travail 
because  it  is  the  supremest  revelation  which  human 
experience  affords  of  life-giving,  and  life-giving  is 
always  costly  to  the  giver.  This  it  is  which  makes 
motherhood  the  most  revered  of  all  offices  and 
mother  the  most  sacred  of  all  words. 

Next  in  real  honor  though  not  in  popular  repute 
is  the  teacher.  She,  too,  is  a  life-giver;  she,  too, 
knows  the  travail  pain  of  imparting  life.     I  said 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  149 

once  to  a  famous  educator,  "  I  should  think  you 
would  get  tired  of  teaching  the  same  lessons  year 
after  year;  what  monotony  of  toil  is  yours."  He 
replied,  "  That  is  because  you  are  not  a  teacher, 
Mr.  Abbott.  An  editor  is  interested  in  new 
themes;  a  teacher  is  interested  in  new  pupils." 
The  teacher's  problem  is  as  old  as  the  ages  and  yet 
new  with  every  morning  and  differs  with  every 
pupil.  It  is  easy  to  lead  a  horse  to  water,  but  hard 
to  make  him  drink.  If  only  these  boys  and  girls 
were  eager  to  learn,  what  a  delight  it  would  be  to 
teach  them.  But  they  are  not  eager  to  learn.  And 
how  to  awaken  intellectual  ambition,  concentration 
of  effort,  steadiness  of  purpose,  is  the  teacher's 
problem.  The  chief  intellectual  quality  she  needs  is 
clearness  of  expression.  The  chief  moral  quality 
she  needs  is  inspired  patience.  And  the  much  cov- 
eted title  of  Ph.D.  does  not  certify  to  either.  If 
she  have  the  teacher's  ambition,  how  often  as  she 
confronts  stolid  and  indifferent  faces  must  she  cry 
out,  Their  ears  are  dull  of  hearing  and  their  eyes 
have  they  closed  lest  at  any  time  they  should  hear 
with  their  ears  and  see  with  their  eyes  and  should 
understand  with  their  hearts.     How  often  as  she 


150     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

sees  them  discarding  her  counsels,  resenting  her 
discipline  and  drifting  away  from  her  influence 
must  she  sorrowfully  say  to  herself,  I  would  have 
gathered  you  together  as  a  hen  gathereth  her 
chickens  under  her  wings  and  ye  would  not! 

I  have  already  indicated  in  a  previous  chapter  that 

the  power  and  the  glory  of  the  Church  is  in  its 

spirit    of    self-sacrifice:    of    the    Roman    Catholic 

Church  not  in  its  cathedrals  and  the  jeweled  robes 

of  its  priests,  but  in  the  self-sacrificing  lives  of  its 

consecrated  sisterhoods;  of  the  Protestant  Church 

not  in  the  autocratic  Archbishop  Laud  but  in  the 

self-sacrificing   lives    of    the    persecuted    Pilgrims. 

The  Church  is  strong  only  when  it  goes  out  to  seek 

and  to  save  that  which  is  lost.     The  altar  in  the 

chancel  and  the  cross  over  it  are  but  symbols.     The 

Church  is  powerful  when  the  spirit  which  the  altar 

and  the  cross  symbolize  inspires  it  to  service  and 

self-sacrifice.     Only  a  missionary  church  is  a  true 

church;  only  a  life-giving  church  is  a  living  church. 

General  Booth  in  his  ever  memorable  address  when 

the  Freedom  of  the  City  was  presented  to  him  by 

the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  revealed  the  secret  of 

its  power :     "  The  Army  has  invited  the  drunkard, 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  151 

the  harlot,  the  criminal,  the  pauper,  the  friendless, 
the  giddy,  dancing,  frivolous  throngs,  to  come  and 
seek  God."  What  sacrifice  giving  that  invitation 
involved  the  story  of  General  Booth's  life  makes 
evident. 

The  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  is  the  secret  of  national 
greatness.  At  this  writing  (1920)  the  United 
States  is  second  to  no  other  Nation  in  its  wealth, 
its  power,  its  opportunity  for  moral  leadership. 
What  has  made  it  great?  Only  citizens  make  a 
Nation  great,  and  only  citizens  who  possess  the 
qualities  of  greatness  —  service  and  sacrifice.  The 
spirit  of  self-sacrifice  called  on  the  men  of  1776,  and 
they  laid  down  their  lives  to  win  liberty  for  them- 
selves and  bequeath  it  to  their  children.  It  called 
on  the  men  of  1812,  and  they  laid  down  their  lives 
to  win  the  freedom  of  the  seas  for  the  commerce 
of  the  world.  It  called  on  the  men  of  1861,  and 
they  laid  down  their  lives  to  maintain  the  life  of 
a  Nation  threatened  with  destruction  and  to  win 
the  emancipation  of  a  race  denied  the  inalienable 
right  to  liberty.  It  called  on  the  men  of  1898,  and 
they  laid  down  their  lives  to  set  free  a  helpless 
neighbor  from  a  sixteenth  century  oppression.     It 


152     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

called  on  the  men  of  19 17,  and  they  laid  down  their 
lives  to  save  their  oppressed  brothers  across  the 
sea.  Ever  since  the  first  Pilgrims  set  sail  from 
Plymouth,  it  has  been  calling  to  their  brothers  and, 
answering  the  call,  millions  of  immigrants  have 
come  hither  from  other  lands;  most  of  them  poor, 
many  of  them  illiterate,  few  of  them  comprehending 
the  nature  of  the  liberty  they  sought.  But  we  who 
were  born  freemen  cannot  easily  realize  what  tears, 
what  heart  aches,  what  home-sickness  many  of  these 
who  are  now  our  fellow  citizens  have  suffered  in 
leaving  their  homes,  their  churches,  their  native  land, 
breaking  away  from  all  their  sacred  associations 
and  honored  traditions,  in  order  that  they  might 
win  for  themselves  and  their  children  and  their 
children's  children  among  strangers  in  an  unknown 
country,  freedom,  education,  a  better  industrial 
opportunity,  a  larger  life.  Theirs,  too,  has  been  the 
spirit  of  self-sacrifice  which  puts  aspiration  above 
present  possession  and  the  love  of  others  above  self- 
love.  The  glory  of  America  is  not  in  its  mines  and 
forests,  its  prairies  and  water  powers,  its  railways 
and  sky-scrapers,  but  in  its  Valley  Forge,  its  Gettys- 
burg, its  San  Juan  Hill,   its  Chateau-Thierry,  its 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  153 

too  little  honored  immigrant  population,  and  in  its 
churches,  its  schools,  and  its  colleges,  built  and 
maintained  by  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice. 

Henry  Drummond  has  shown  in  his  discerning 
volume,  "  The  Ascent  of  Man,"  that  this  life  of 
self-sacrifice  is  discernible  throughout  the  drama  of 
creation  daily  enacted  before  our  eyes,  from  the 
division  of  the  cell  in  the  very  beginnings  of  life 
to  the  highest  ministrations  of  self-sacrificing  love 
in  motherhood.  "  There  are,"  he  writes,  "  two 
Struggles  for  Life  in  every  living  thing;  the 
Struggle  for  Life  and  the  Struggle  for  the  Life  of 
Others."  And  again:  "  The  Creation  is  a  drama, 
and  no  drama  was  ever  put  upon  the  stage  with 
only  one  actor.  The  Struggle  for  Life  is  the  '  Vil- 
lain '  of  the  piece,  no  more;  and,  like  the  '  Villain ' 
in  the  play,  its  chief  function  is  to  re-act  upon  the 
other  players  for  higher  ends.  There  is,  in  point 
of  fact,  a  second  factor  which  one  might  venture  to 
call  the  Struggle  for  the  Life  of  Others,  which  plays 
an  equally  prominent  part.  Even  in  the  early 
stages  of  development,  its  contribution  is  as  real, 
while  in  the  world's  later  progress  —  under  the 
name    of    Altruism  —  it    assumes    a    sovereignty 


154     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

before  which  the  earlier  Struggle  sinks  into  insig- 
nificance." And  still  again :  "  The  first  chapter  or 
two  of  the  Story  of  Evolution  may  be  headed  the 
Struggle  for  Life,  but  take  the  book  as  a  whole 
and  it  is  not  a  tale  of  battle.  It  is  a  Love  story." 
That  sacrifice  is  the  law  of  nature  is  recognized 
by  such  purely  scientific  and  avowedly  unreligious 
writers  as  Darwin  and  Haeckel;  but  nowhere  I 
think  is  it  more  beautifully  portrayed  and  scien- 
tifically demonstrated  than  in  this  volume  of  Henry 
Drummond,  from  which  I  must  content  myself 
with  one  more  quotation  in  which  the  truth  is 
interpreted  with  equal  scientific  clearness  and 
spiritual  beauty. 

To  interpret  the  course  of  Evolution  without  this  [law 
of  sacrifice]  would  be  to  leave  the  richest  side  even  of 
material  Nature  without  an  explanation.  Retrace  the 
ground  even  thus  hastily  travelled  over,  and  see  how  full 
Creation  is  of  meaning,  of  anticipation,  of  good  for  man, 
how  far  back  begins  the  undertone  of  Love.  Remember 
that  nearly  all  the  beauty  of  the  world  is  Love-Beauty  — 
the  corolla  of  the  flower  and  the  plume  of  the  grass,  the 
lamp  of  the  firefly,  the  plumage  of  the  bird,  the  horn 
of  the  stag,  the  face  of  a  woman;  that  nearly  all  the 
music  of  the  natural  world  is  Love-Music  —  the  song  of 
the  nightingale,  the  call  of  the  mammal,  the  chorus  of 
the  insect,  the  serenade  of  the  lover;  that  nearly  all  the 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  155 

foods  of  the  world  are  Love-foods  —  the  date  and  the 
raisin,  the  banana  and  the  bread-fruit,  the  locust  and  the 
honey,  the  eggs,  the  grains,  the  seeds,  the  cereals,  and  the 
legumes;  that  all  the  drinks  of  the  world  are  Love-drinks 
—  the  juice  of  the  sprouting  grain  and  the  withered  hop, 
the  milk  from  the  udder  of  the  cow,  the  wine  from  the 
Love-cup  of  the  vine.  Remember  that  the  Family,  the 
crown  of  all  higher  life,  is  the  creation  of  Love;  that  Co- 
operation, which  means  power,  which  means  wealth,  which 
means  leisure,  which  therefore  means  art  and  culture, 
recreation  and  education,  is  the  gift  of  Love.  Remember 
not  only  these  things,  but  the  diffusions  of  feeling  which 
accompany  them,  the  elevations,  the  ideals,  the  happiness, 
the  goodness,  and  the  faith  in  more  goodness,  and  ask 
if  it  is  not  a  world  of  Love  in  which  we  live.^ 

Truly  does  Drummond  sa}^  that  "  Literally,  scien- 
tifically, Love  is  life."  Myriad  are  the  voices  with 
which  nature  proclaims  that  God  is  Love  and  that 
Love  can  give  life  only  through  suffering  and  self- 
sacrifice.  Science  confirms  what  the  heart  of  man 
has  desired  to  believe.  Love  and  sacrifice  —  the 
Struggle  for  Others  —  is  the  law  of  human  nature 
because  it  is  the  law  of  God's  own  nature.  His  own 
spirit,  the  spirit  of  love,  service  and  sacrifice,  he 
breathed  into  man  in  the  dawn  of  creation,  and 
still    breathes    into    every    child    of    man    who    is 

1  Henry  Drummond:  "The  Ascent  of  Man,"  page  232. 


156     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

brought  into  the  world.  As  the  mother  can  give 
life  to  the  child,  the  saint  to  the  church,  the  patriot 
to  the  nation,  the  nation  to  the  world,  and  nature 
to  her  great  progeny,  so  God  can  give  his  life  to 
his  children  only  by  sacrifice. 

The  pagans  offered  sacrifices  to  appease  the  wrath 
of  angry  gods  or  win  the  favor  of  corruptible  gods; 
the  Israelites  offered  sacrifices,  to  satisfy  the  law 
of  a  just  God  or  to  express  their  thanks  for  the 
goodness  of  a  merciful  God.  Both  offered  sacri- 
fices by  or  on  behalf  of  men  to  God  or  the  gods. 
The  Glad  Tidings  of  Jesus  Christ  is  that  sacrifice 
for  sin  is  offered  not  by  man  to  God  but  God  to 
man;  it  is  not  an  act  of  man  to  procure  forgive- 
ness but  an  act  of  God  conferring  forgiveness. 
God  brings  the  gift  into  the  temple  and  man  comes 
empty-handed.  The  rich  One  brings  his  wealth  to 
the  poor;  the  wise  One  brings  his  wisdom  to  the 
ignorant;  the  strong  One  brings  his  strength  to  the 
weak;  the  living  One  brings  his  life  to  the  dead. 

The  New  Testament  writers  present  this  truth 
in  many  different  ways. 

Sometimes  in  argument  with  the  Jews,  as  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews :  there  is  no  longer  need 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  157 

of  a  Temple,  for  man  is  the  Temple  and  God  dwells 
in  him;  there  is  no  longer  need  of  a  sacrijEice,  for 
God's  Son  is  the  sacrifice. 

Sometimes  in  a  figure:  the  Lamb  of  God  taketh 
away  the  sins  of  the  world;  the  Lamb  is  one  which 
God  provides,  man  has  not  to  provide  one. 

Sometimes  in  explicit  terms:  Hereby  know  we 
love  because  he  laid  down  his  life  for  us;  and  we 
ought  to  lay  down  our  lives  for  the  brethren. 

Sometimes  as  God's  unspeakable  gift  to  the 
world:  God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his 
only  begotten  Son. 

Sometimes  as  the  revelation  in  a  divinely  en- 
dowed human  life  of  what  God  is  and  what  we 
ought  to  be :  Have  this  mind  in  you,  which  was 
also  in  Christ  Jesus :  who,  existing  in  the  form  of 
God,  counted  not  the  being  on  an  equality  with 
God  a  thing  to  be  grasped,  but  emptied  himself, 
taking  the  form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in  the 
likeness  of  men;  and  being  found  in  fashion  as  a 
man,  he  humbled  himself,  becoming  obedient  even 
unto  death,  yea,  the  death  of  the  cross. 

Sometimes  by  a  figure  often  used  in  Christian 
literature   but   often   misunderstood   and   misinter- 


158     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

preted.  "  The  life  of  the  flesh,"  said  the  Jewish 
law,  "  is  in  the  blood."  This  use  of  blood  to 
signify  the  vital  principle,  the  life,  the  temper  of 
mind,  the  natural  disposition,  the  inherited  quality 
or  character  is  very  common  in  English  literature 
and  ought  to  have  saved  us  from  misunderstanding 
it  as  used  in  the  Bible.  "  The  blood  of  Christ," 
says  Stanley,  "  means  the  inmost  essence  of  his 
character."  ^  Substitute  the  words  "  deliverance 
from  sin  "  for  "  forgiveness  of  sin "  and  "  life 
poured  out "  for  "  blood  shed "  and  texts  which 
have  often  been  emptied  of  their  meaning  become 
vital  again. 

This  is  the  New  Covenant  in  my  life  poured  out 
for  many  for  their  deliverance  from  sin. 

Except  a  man  imbibe  my  spirit  of  life  he  cannot 
be  my  disciple. 

The  spirit  of  Christ's  life  cleanseth  us  from  all 
sin. 

Without  the  imparting  -of  life  there  can  be  no 
deliverance  from  sin. 

1  See  Dean  Stanley's  Essay  on  "  The  Body  and  the  Blood  " 
in  his  "  Christian  Institutions."  See  also  the  illustrations  of 
this  customary  use  of  blood  in  English  literature  given  by  the 
Century  Dictionary. 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  159 

We  are  saved  not  by  the  drops  of  blood  which 
trickled  down  from  Christ's  hands  and  feet,  not  by 
the  blood  and  water  that  flowed  after  his  death 
from  Christ's  pierced  side;  but  by  the  life  which 
that  blood  symbolized;  the  life  given  from  his  early 
boyhood  to  his  death;  the  life  still  given  by  him 
in  every  self-sacrificing  service  of  mother  to  her 
children,  of  every  Christian  worker  to  his  church, 
of  every  patriotic  citizen  to  his  country,  of  the 
loyal  soldier  laying  down  his  life  on  the  field  of 
battle.  Every  aspiration  to  a  life  of  love,  service 
and  sacrifice,  however  it  may  seem  to  come,  repeats 
the  call  of  the  Apostle — "I  beseech  you  by  the 
mercies  of  God  that  you  present  your  bodies  a  living 
sacrifice,  holy,  acceptable  unto  God,  which  is  your 
reasonable  service." 

It  was  not  by  his  death  that  Christ  saved  the 
world,  but  by  laying  down  his  Hfe  for  the  world  — 
by  his  death  only  as  that  was  an  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  the  completeness  of  his  consecration  to 
his  Father's  will.  Passion  week  began  when  he  was 
born ;  yea,  when  in  the  counsels  of  eternity  he  said, 
I  will  go  down  into  that  suffering,  sin-stricken  world 
and  will  lay  down  my  life  for  it.     From  the  be- 


i6o     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

ginning  to  the  end  his  life  was  laid  down  for  hu- 
manity. Laid  down  as  truly  when  he  went  into 
the  wilderness  and  wrestled  with  the  tempter;  as 
truly  when  he  went  into  the  courts  of  Jerusalem 
and  scourged  out  the  traders,  knowing  what  hos- 
tility he  was  arousing ;  as  truly  when  he  set  his  face 
steadfastly  to  go  to  Jerusalem,  where  his  enemies 
were,  and  his  disciples  followed  amazed  and  won- 
der-stricken that  he  should  go  thither;  as  truly 
when  he  knew  the  plot  that  Judas  was  making  for 
his  destruction  and  refused  to  flee;  as  truly  when 
he  faced  the  mob  in  the  Temple  courts  in  Jerusalem 
and  told  the  Hebrews  to  their  face  that  they  were 
traitors  to  their  God  and  to  their  native  land  —  as 
truly  then  as  when  in  the  court  of  Pilate  he  said, 
"  I  am  a  king,"  and  when  in  the  court  of  Caiaphas 
he  said,  "  I  am  the  Son  of  God,""  and  walked  out 
bearing  his  cross  to  be  nailed  upon  it.  And  in  all 
this  he  was  interpreting  the  life  of  God  in  his 
world;  the  life  of  a  Father  who  always  has  com- 
passion on  his  children,  always  goes  out  to  seek 
and  to  save  them,  always  shares  their  sorrows  and 
their  sins. 

Tersely  and  very  beautifully  and  very  clearly  has 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  i6i 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge  put  this  truth,  this  revelation  of 
the  nature  and  perpetual  sacrifice  of  God  through 
the  life  and  passion  of  Jesus  Christ,  In  what  is,  I 
think,  the  briefest  life  of  Jesus  in  literature,  but 
not  the  least  significant : 

Undoubtedly  the  Christian  idea  of  God  is  the  simple 
one.  Overpoweringly  and  appallingly  simple  is  the  notion 
presented  to  us  by  the  orthodox  Christian  churches:  —  A 
babe  born  of  poor  parents,  born  in  a  stable  among  cattle 
because  there  was  no  room  for  them  in  the  village  inn 
—  no  room  for  them  in  the  inn  —  what  a  master  touch! 
Revealed  to  shepherds.  Religious  people  inattentive. 
Royalty  ignorant,  or  bent  on  massacre.  .  .  .  Then  the 
child  growing  into  a  peasant  youth,  brought  up  to  a  trade. 
At  length  a  few  years  of  itinerant  preaching;  flashes  of 
miraculous  power  and  insight.  And  then  a  swift  end: 
set  upon  by  the  religious  people;  his  followers  over-awed 
and  scattered,  himself  tried  as  a  blasphemer,  flogged,  and 
finally  tortured  to  death.  Simplicity  most  thorough  and 
most  strange !  In  itself  it  is  not  unique;  such  occurrences 
seem  inevitable  to  highest  humanity  in  an  unregenerate 
world;  but  who,  without  inspiration  would  see  in  them  a 
revelation  of  the  nature  of  God?^ 

Jesus  Christ  came  to  a  Nation  in  which  for 
centuries  religion  had  found  two  not  always  con- 
sistent   interpretations  —  one    priestly,    the    other 

1  Sir  Oliver  Lodge :  "  Raymond,"  p.  381. 


i62     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

prophetic.  The  priestly  conception  centered  around 
and  was  expressed  by  an  elaborate  sacrificial  system 
whose  temple  ran  red  with  the  blood  of  slaughtered 
cattle/  This  priestly  conception  Jesus  Christ  never 
approved  by  word  or  act.  He  frequently  promised 
forgiveness  of  sin,  but  never  suggested  that  the 
penitent  should  offer  a  sacrifice  to  insure  the  for- 
giveness or  complete  the  penitence.  He  told  his 
disciples  that  he  must  himself  suffer  for  sinful 
humanity,  that  he  must  give  himself  a  ransom  for 
many,  that  he  must  bear  the  cross  and  be  borne 
upon  it;  but  he  also  told  them  that  by  so  doing 
he  would  show  forth  the  glory  of  his  Heavenly 
Father.  His  suffering  love  Christ  never  inter- 
preted as  man's  offering  to  God;  but  always  as 
God's  offering  to  man.  Man  does  not  in  his  deep 
abasement  offer  sacrifice  to  appease  God's  wrath; 
God  in  his  infinite  love  offers  sacrifice  to  purify 
man  and  to  impart  life  to  him. 

Christ's  instructions  to  his  disciples  are  equally 

1  In  "  The  Life  and  Literature  of  the  Ancient  Hebrews  "  I 
have  indicated  more  fully  the  conflict  between  these  two  con- 
ceptions of  religion  and  traced  very  briefly  the  way  in  which 
the  priestly  conception  was  borrowed  from  paganism  and 
grafted  upon  Judaism. 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  163 

inconsistent  with  the  notion  that  pardon  is  to  be 
purchased  by  sacrifice.  He  bade  his  disciples 
forgive  their  enemies  as  their  Father  forgives  them, 
a  counsel  which  would  require  us  to  ask  a  sacrifice 
of  every  one  that  wrongs  us,  if  the  Father  asks  a 
sacrifice  by  us  or  on  our  behalf  as  a  condition  of 
his  forgiveness.  Christ  told  a  story  once  which 
makes  this  parallelism  perfectly  clear.  A  lord  had 
a  servant  who  owed  him  one  hundred  talents  and 
when  he  had.  nothing  to  pay,  freely  forgave  him  the 
debt.  But  this  servant  went  out  and  cast  into 
prison  a  fellow  servant  who  owed  him  one  hundred 
pence.  And  his  lord  was  wroth  with  him  for 
treating  his  fellow  servant  with  such  inconsistent 
inhumanity.  The  ground  of  Christ's  appeal  to  his 
disciples  to  forgive  freely  those  that  have  wronged 
them  is  the  fact  that  the  Heavenly  Father  freely 
forgives  them  that  have  sinned  against  him.  In 
neither  case  is  the  payment  of  the  unpayable  debt 
to  be  demanded. 

Is  there  then  no  sacrifice?  Surely  there  is  a 
sacrifice;  but  by  God  to  man,  not  by  man  to  God. 

It  has  been  said  that  in  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal 
Son  there  is  no  hint  of  sacrifice.     Is   this  true? 


i64     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

There  is  no  hint  of  any  sacrifice  by  man  to  God. 
The  father  in  the  parable  does  not  wait  to  be 
entreated,  nor  to  have  his  wrath  appeased,  nor  to 
have  his  justice  satisfied,  nor  to  have  the  debt  of 
the  sinful  son  paid  by  or  for  him.  But  the  suffering 
of  God  for  his  sinful  children  is  clearly  and  vividly 
portrayed.  The  father  had  mourned  his  son  as 
lost,  and  behold  he  is  found;  he  had  mourned  his 
son  as  dead,  and  behold  there  is  in  his  repentance 
the  sign  of  a  dawning  life.  The  father  had  com- 
passion on  him,  that  is,  suffered  with  him.  And 
while  the  son  still  held  himself  afar  off,  ashamed 
to  go  on  but  reluctant  to  turn  back,  the  father 
went  out  to  welcome  him.  The  son  suffered  the 
shame  of  his  own  sin.  The  father  suffered  the 
shame  of  his  son's  sin.  This  common  experience 
brought  them  together.  If  the  son  had  not  felt 
ashamed  of  his  sin  no  love  of  the  father  could  have 
made  the  son  a  sharer  in  his  father's  life.  If  the 
father  had  not  felt  the  shame  of  his  son's  sin,  if  he 
had  dismissed  it  lightly  and  carelessly  as  a  "  sowing 
of  wild  oats,"  the  son  could  not  have  shared  his 
father's  life.  But  when  the  son  and  the  father 
share  in  a  common  sorrow,  when  repentance  and 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  165 

sacrifice  meet,  a  life  in  common  begins;  the  fatal 
separation  between  the  father  and  his  child  is  ended ; 
they  are  at  one;  at-one-ment  is  made. 

The  only  sacrifice  Christianity  knows  is  self- 
sacrifice;  and  self-sacrifice  is  the  glory  of  God  and 
the  power  of  God. 

From  the  time  of  Christ  the  sacrifice  in  the 
Jewish  temple  ceases.  The  Christian  temple  courts 
are  not  reddened  with  the  blood  of  victims.  Sacri- 
fices are  no  longer  offered  to  God;  the  sacrifice  of 
the  Son  of  God  is  accepted  by  man.  The  passion 
and  death  of  Qirist  are  the  witness  of  a  love  deep, 
tender,  true,  eternal,  in  the  heart  of  the  Father, 
the  source  of  all  love,  causing  all  love;  but  itself 
uncaused.  The  culmination  of  the  long  spiritual 
development  issues  in  the  declaration,  "  Herein  is 
love,  not  that  we  loved  God,  but  that  he  first  loved 
us,  and  sent  his  Son  to  be  the  propitiation  for  our 
sins."  He  is  not  to  be  propitiated;  he  propitiates 
himself.  He  satisfies  his  justice  by  his  own 
redeeming  love.  The  life,  suffering  and  death  of 
Christ  are  not  to  enable  God  to  be  a  justifier,  not- 
withstanding he  is  just,  but  to  show  that  his  is  a 
justice  which  does  justify,  a  righteousness  which 


i66     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

Tightens,  a  nature  which,  because  he  cannot  brook 
unrighteousness,  suffers  the  shame  of  it  as  though 
it  were  his  own,  until  by  his  suffering  love  he  has 
entered  even  callous  and  indifferent  hearts  and 
filled  them  with  his  Spirit. 

Is  this  to  say  that  sin  is  a  light  matter,  easily 
overcome,  of  small  consequence,  with  little  ill  dessert 
and  little  evil  consequence?  On  the  contrary,  sin 
not  only  fills  to  the  brim  with  suffering  the  cup  of 
him  who  indulges  in  it,  not  only  presses  a  cup  of 
even  greater  bitterness  to  the  lips  of  every  loving 
and  Christlike  soul  who  longs  and  strives  to  deliver 
his  brother  from  the  poisoned  chalice,  but  it  brings 
suffering  upon  the  heart  of  the  infinite  and  loving 
God,  who  is  himself  able  to  save  his  children  from 
their  own  self-destruction  only  by  his  own  suffering 
of  their  self-inflicted  penalty.  This  is  the  Gospel. 
And  history  proves  it  a  far  more  effective  message 
for  the  redemption  of  mankind  than  any  message 
of  law  and  penalty,  however  qualified  and  amelio- 
rated by  a  message  of  mercy  purchased  only  by 
sacrifice  offered  by  the  sinner  or  on  his  behalf  to  an 
angry  God,  hard  to  be  entreated. 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  167 

Let  me  try  to  make  this  clear  by  a  simple  illus- 
tration. 

A  young  girl  grows  up  in  culture  and  refinement. 
She  is  surrounded  in  her  home  by  every  conceivable 
comfort.  The  air  she  breathes  is  as  pure  as  the 
air  that  blows  from  Mont  Blanc.  But  she  reads  the 
story  of  sin  and  degradation  in  the  East  Side  of 
New  York,  and  it  fills  her  with  bitter  sorrow.  It 
is  a  terrible  thing,  she  says,  that  men  and  women 
should  be  living  such  lives  as  these.  Will  you 
satisfy  her  by  saying  that  they  will  suffer  for  it? 
Will  you  satisfy  her  by  saying,  Let  the  drunkard 
alone,  and  he  will  have  poverty  and  disease  and 
hunger  and  every  form  of  wretchedness?  Let  self- 
ishness alone  and  it  will  embitter  the  lives  of  all 
selfish  people.  Let  malice  alone  and  they  that  are 
living  in  malice  will  pay  the  natural  penalty  of 
their  iniquity.  Will  that  satisfy  her?  No!  She 
will  reply,  That  is  what  troubles  me.  I  want  to 
cure,  not  to  punish.  Justice  does  not  satisfy  love, 
never  can  satisfy  love.  She  leaves  her  home  —  the 
physical  luxury,  the  pure  atmosphere,  the  congenial 
companionship  —  goes  over  to  the  East  Side,  takes 


i68     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

a  room,  lives  there  with  a  single  companion,  and 
gives  herself  to  the  work  of  cleansing  where  there 
is  filth,  redeeming  where  there  is  vice,  bringing  love 
in  where  there  was  hate.  Go  and  look  at  her. 
Her  face  shines  with  a  glory  that  was  never  there 
before.  If  you  could  see  into  her  heart,  you  would 
see  there  a  joy  inspiring  her  that  she  never  knew 
before.  She  has  propitiated  herself  by  her  own 
forgiving  sacrifice.  Her  love  is  satisfying  her. 
All  propitiation  is  self-propitiation.  One  person 
can  never  satisfy  another.  There  is  no  wrath  of 
God  to  be  appeased  by  human  sacrifice;  none  that 
can  be  satisfied  by  natural  penalty.  The  flames  of 
hell  never  could  burn  out  the  wrath  of  God.  It 
will  be  burned  out  by  the  fire  of  his  own  infinite 
love. 

The  sacrifice  goes  not  forth  from  man  to  God 
to  win  his  mercy,  but  from  God  to  man  to  win 
him  back  to  life.  And  it  goes  from  man  to  man  if 
the  spirit  of  God,  that  is,  the  spirit  of  love,  service 
and  sacrifice  is  in  man.  What  does  Christ  mean 
when  he  says  that  we  are  to  take  up  our  cross  and 
follow  him?     What  does  Paul  mean  when  he  says 


MY  LIFE  A  RANSOM  FOR  MANY  169 

we  must  fill  up  that  which  is  lacking  in  the  suffer- 
ings of  Christ  by  our  own  suffering?  Is  the 
wrath  of  God  not  yet  appeased?  Does  he  still  hold 
his  anger,  despite  all  these  generations  of  tears, 
suffering,  pain,  agony,  and  all  the  agony  on  Geth- 
semane  and  the  blood  upon  the  cross?  Must  you 
and  I  still  suffer  in  order  to  appease  the  wrath  of  a 
still  angry  God  ?  Surely  not.  To  take  up  Christ's 
cross  and  follow  him  is  to  share  with  him  in  offer- 
ing the  sacrifice  of  love  to  sinful  humanity,  to  whom 
love  must  still  offer  its  sacrifice  until  sin  is  no 
more. 

If  I  could  paint  the  shadow  of  the  cross,  I  would 
not  paint  it  as  the  shadow  of  a  yawning  boy  cast 
on  the  w^all  betokening  his  weariness  of  the  task 
which  has  been  set  him  to  perform.  Have  you  not 
seen  the  mother  with  her  arms  outstretched  and 
the  little  child  drawn  by  this  silent  invitation  of  her 
welcoming  love,  run  quickly  to  her  that  the  mother's 
arms  might  clasp  him  to  her  bosom.  I  would  paint 
the  shadow  of  that  mother's  love  upon  the  wall; 
for  God's  love  reaches  out  to  lay  hold  upon  the 
weakest,  the  poorest,  the  most  sinful  of  his  children, 


170     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

and  the  cross  of  Christ  is  the  shadow  thrown  upon 
the  earth  of  the  Father's  inviting  and  welcoming 
love. 

The  glory  of  Christ  is  not  the  triumphal  entrance 
into  Jerusalem  but  the  funeral  procession  from 
Jerusalem  to  Calvary.  And  the  glory  of  Chris- 
tianity is  in  the  lives  of  love,  service  and  sacrifice 
of  the  unnumbered  millions  who,  following  their 
Leader,  have  laid  down  their  lives  and  are  laying 
down  their  lives  for  their  brethren.  Christ's  cross 
is  the  throne  of  God.  The  crown  which  He 
bestows  upon  his  faithful  followers  is  the  crown  of 
thorns  —  the  self-sacrifice  of  a  life-giving  love. 


CHAPTER  X 

THY   KINGDOM'   COME   ON    EARTH 

In  all  that  Jesus  said  and  did  —  inspiring  a  new 
philanthropy,  imparting  the  life  of  the  spirit,  curing 
the  sin-sick,  laying  down  his  life  in  ceaseless  serv- 
ice and  self-sacrifice, —  he  was  fulfilling  the  mission 
which  his  Father  had  entrusted  to  him. 

He  began  his  ministry  as  a  herald  preaching  to 
an  expectant  people.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at 
hand.  He  ended  it  by  testifying  under  oath  to  the 
Sandhedrin  that  he  was  the  long-hoped  for  Deliv- 
erer and  declaring  to  Pilate  that  he  was  a  King 
whose  empire  and  whose  arms  were  truth.  To  that 
mission  he  devoted  himself  in  life;  for  that  mission 
he  surrendered  himself  to  death;  that  mission  he 
passed  on  to  his  followers;  and  the  hope  that  the 
Kingdom  of  God  might  come  on  earth  which  dom- 
inated his  life  and  sustained  him  in  death  he  be- 
queathed to  them  to  be  their  prayer  and  their  life 

purpose. 

171 


172     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

What  did  he  mean  by  the  Kingdom  of  God? 

From  the  very  beginning  of  their  history  as  a 
Nation,  the  Jews  had  been  taught  by  their  prophets 
to  loot:  forward  to  a  Golden  Age  when  Israel  should 
be  a  world  ruler,  all  peoples,  nations  and  languages 
should  serve  him,  and  under  his  just  and  beneficent 
rule  poverty,  ignorance,  oppression  and  wars  should 
cease.  These  prophecies  are  often  obscure  and 
sometimes  seemingly  contradictory.  Sometimes 
this  Kingdom  is  to  be  brought  in  by  a  King  in  his 
glory,  sometimes  by  a  Sufferer  who  will  be  despised 
and  rejected  of  men,  sometimes  by  Israel  embodied 
in  a  divine  leader,  sometimes  by  the  Nation  whom 
the  prophet  personifies  as  itself  a  Leader.  This  is 
not  strange.  We  mistake  if  we  imagine  that  the 
object  of  prophecy  is  to  give  accurate  information 
of  future  events.  This  the  prophets  have  never  suc- 
ceeded in  doing,  probably  never  endeavored  to  do. 
They  were  poets;  they  were  not  anticipating  his- 
torians. They  spoke  words  of  hope  to  inspire  to 
courage  and  words  of  warning  to  admonish  to  cau- 
tion ;  and  their  words  were  not  less  effectual  because 
both  the  promises  and  the  warnings  were  often  ill- 
defined  and   imperfectly  understood.     In  the  first 


THY  KINGDOM  COME  ON  EARTH         173 

century  the  spirit  of  prophecy  was  dead  in  Israel, 
scribes  had  taken  the  place  of  prophets.  The  peo- 
ple, illy  instructed  by  these  "  blind  leaders  of  the 
blind "  interpreted  literally  the  prophecies  which 
pleased  them  and  ignored  the  others.  This  has  been 
the  custom  of  literalists  in  all  ages. 

They  were  familiar  with  world  empires.  At  suc- 
cessive epochs  Egypt,  Chaldea,  Assyria,  Babylon 
Greece,  had  ruled  the  world.  At  that  time  Rome 
was  ruler  of  the  world.  It  was  easy  to  believe  that 
Israel's  turn  would  come,  that  the  gods  of  the  pagan 
would  disappear,  that  Jehovah  would  take  their 
place,  that  Rome  would  fall  into  ruins  and  Jerusa- 
lem would  become  the  world  capital,  that  the 
prophec}'-  of  Daniel  would  be  fulfilled  and  the  great- 
ness of  the  kingdoms  under  the  whole  heaven  would 
be  given  to  the  people  of  the  saints  of  the  Most  High. 
Doubtless  the  national  ideal  was  both  vague  and 
contradictory.  National  ideals  always  are  vague 
and  contradictory.  In  America  to-day  the  ideal  of 
some  is  material  prosperity,  of  others  educational 
development,  of  still  others  spiritual  richness  of  life. 
As  now,  so  then.  The  Kingdom  of  God  meant  pros- 
perity and   happiness   and   also   righteousness   and 


174     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

peace.  Some  put  emphasis  on  prosperity,  others  on 
righteousness.  But  they  all  agreed  upon  at  least 
two  points:  that  Israel  would  rule  the  world;  and 
that  her  rule  would  be  given  to  her  by  Jehovah  as 
a  sudden  and  splendid  gift.  *'  The  idea  of  a  gradual 
and  regular  progress  upon  earth  was  totally  unknown 
to  them.  They,  on  the  contrary,  were  now  familiar 
with,  and  found  no  objection  to,  ideas  of  sudden  or 
catastrophic  change.  In  fact  they  usually  thought 
that  the  Golden  Age  would  (by  divine  intervention) 
immediately  succeed  an  age  of  violence  and  wicked- 
ness; the  worst  would  be  immediately  followed  by 
the  best."  They  believed  "  that  God  could  and 
would  suddenly,  and  one  might  almost  say  violently, 
create  a  new  world,  not  through  human  cooperation, 
not  through  human  achievement,  but  by  His  own 
power.  His  own  will,  His  own  goodness,  and  for 
His  own  sake  and  glory  as  much  as  for  the  sake  and 
glory  of  Israel."  ^ 

In  his  first  recorded  sermon,  preached  in  the  syna- 

1  C.  G.  Montefiore :  "  Outlines  of  Liberal  Judaism,"  p.  151. 
"  Some  Elements  of  the  Religious  Teaching  of  Jesus,"  1910, 
p.  64.  This  interpretation  by  a  liberal  and  scholarly  modern 
Jewish  teacher  cannot  be  suspected  of  Christian  prejudice 
against  the  Jewish  conception  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  In 
fact  Dr.  Montefiore  thinks  Jesus  shared  that  corfception. 


THY  KINGDOM  COME  ON  EARTH         175 

gogue  of  the  village  of  Nazareth,  the  home  of  his 
youth,  Jesns  took  for  his  text  a  passage  from  one  of 
the  ancient  prophets  f oretelHng  the  Golden  Age.  He 
declared  that  the  fulfillment  of  these  prophecies  was 
at  hand.  He  was  heard  at  first  with  delight.  But 
when  he  went  on  to  say  that  Jehovah  was  God  of 
the  Gentiles  as  well  as  of  the  Jews,  and  took  two  in- 
stances from  the  Old  Testament  history  to  illus- 
trate the  truth  that  God  is  no  respecter  of  races  as 
he  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  the  wrath  of  his  hear- 
ers knew  no  bounds,  the  worshipping  congregation 
was  transformed  into  a  mob,  and  he  would  have  been 
slain  on  the  spot  had  he  not  with  that  mysterious 
magnetic  power,  of  which  history  affords  other  like 
examples,  awed  the  crowd  and  passed  through  their 
midst  unharmed.  Never  thereafter  in  public  dis- 
course did  he  attempt  to  define  in  unmistakable 
terms  his  interpretation  of  the  coming  Kingdom. 
His  teaching  concerning  it  was  disguised  in  parables 
—  purposely  disguised.  H  it  were  stated  plainly 
the  people  would  have  none  of  it.  To  stories  they 
would  listen,  and  afterwards,  thinking  them  over 
and  discussing  them  among  themselves,  they  might 
come  to  some  glimmerings  of  the  truth.     When  oc- 


176     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

casionally  he  disclosed  to  his  immediate  friends  his 
mission  he  cautioned  them  to  tell  no  one;  to  tell 
would  close  the  only  door  of  access  to  the  people 
which  was  open  to  him  and  would  do  not  good  but 
harm.  When  toward  the  end  of  his  life  his  hearers 
caught  his  meaning  the  effect  was  to  fan  the  smoking 
prejudice  of  the  ecclesiastical  party  into  a  hot  flame 
of  anger.  When  in  a  sermon  of  some  length  he  ex- 
plained to  the  people  of  Galilee,  where  his  friends 
were  mostly  to  be  found,  that  the  Kingdom  of  God 
could  come  only  to  a  people  who  shared  his  spirit  of 
service  and  self-sacrifice,  so  many  of  his  former  dis- 
ciples abandoned  him  that  he  turned  sadly  to  his 
twelve  intimate  friends  with  the  question  "  Will  ye 
also  go  away?" 

Matthew  has  collected  in  one  chapter  of  his  narra- 
tive several  of  these  parables  of  the  Kingdom.  Add- 
ing to  them  one  reported  by  Mark  but  not  by  Mat- 
thew, and  guided  by  his  own  interpretation  to  the 
Twelve  of  several  of  these  parables,  we  may  sum- 
marize Jesus'  interpretation  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
as  follows: 

It  will  not  come  suddenly  nor  violently;  it  will  not 
come  as  a  divine  gift  without  human  cooperation, 


THY  KINGDOM  COME  ON  EARTH         177 

nor  by  a  catastrophic  change.  It  will  grow  up  like 
a  seed  planted  in  the  ground.  As  the  earth  bears 
fruit  of  itself  and  we  know  not  why  nor  how,  so  this 
kingdom  will  grow  up  by  spiritual  forces  within 
men, —  a  growth  not  a  gift,  or,  rather,  a  gift  that  is 
a  growth,  but  brought  forth  from  men  not  imposed 
upon  them.  Its  growth  therefore  will  depend  upon 
the  nature  of  the  individuals  and  of  the  races  to 
whom  the  truth  of  God  comes.  Evil  will  grow  as 
well  as  good;  men  will  wonder  whence  the  evil 
comes,  and  why,  and  whether  the  world  is  growing 
worse  or  better.  The  beginnings  of  the  Kingdom 
will  be  insignificant ;  but  it  will  grow  to  be  a  shade, 
a  shelter,  a  bearer  of  fruit,  a  nesting  place,  a  home 
of  abundant  life.  It  will  be  like  yeast,  a  source  of 
agitation.  It  will  be  costly, —  all  that  a  man  hath 
he  must  be  willing  to  give  that  he  may  possess  it. 

Other  parables  add  other  aspects  of  Jesus'  teach- 
ing concerning  the  Kingdom.  Often  God  will  seem 
like  an  absentee  landlord ;  men  will  be  thrown  upon 
their  own  resources,  will  be  left  to  their  own  de- 
vices ;  trusted  that  they  may  be  tried.  In  this  King- 
dom men  are  judged  by  their  practice  not  by  their 
profession.     Of  two  sons,  the  one  who  promises  his 


178     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

father  to  do  the  task  allotted  to  him  and  does  noth- 
ing is  rejected;  the  son  who  declines  the  task  and 
then  engages  in  it  is  accepted.  The  Kingdom  is  for 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  for  Jew  and  Gentile, 
for  good,  bad  and  indifferent.  It  is  like  a  feast  to 
which  the  lame,  the  halt,  and  the  blind  are  invited. 
It  is  a  present  life,  not  a  something  postponed  to  a 
future  age.  All  things  are  now  ready.  It  is  among 
you.^  It  can  he  had  by  any  one  who  wishes  it.  The 
only  condition  is  loyalty.  It  is  not  a  place  but  an 
attitude  of  mind,  a  course  of  conduct  —  in  a  word, 
a  life.  The  separation  between  those  in  the  King- 
dom and  those  without  it  is  invisible,  as  invisible  as 
that  between  the  loyal  and  the  disloyal  citizen  of 
America.  But  it  is  an  infinite  gulf  —  as  deep  as 
hell,  as  broad  as  eternity.  Two  women  are  in  the 
same  social  company :  one  is  in  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
the  other  in  the  kingdom  of  fashion.  Two  mer- 
chants are  in  the  same  store :  one  is  in  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  the  other  in  the  kingdom  of  greed.  Two 
lawyers  are  in  the  same  court  room:  one  is  in  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  the  other  in  the  kingdom  of  am- 

^  Or  within  you ;  either  translation  is  possible,  and  there  is 
really  no  practicable  difference  between  the  two  interpreta- 
tions. 


THY  KINGDOM  COME  ON  EARTH        179 

bition.  Two  statesmen  are  in  the  same  legislative 
chambers :  one  is  in  the  Kingdom  of  God,  the  other 
in  the  kingdom  of  party  policy.  Two  ministers  are 
in  the  same  ecclesiastical  assembly :  one  is  in  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  the  other  in  the  kingdom  of  false 
pretense.  Everywhere  there  are  sitting  side  by 
side  in  the  same  room,  breathing  the  same  air,  tak- 
ing part  in  the  same  activities,  Paul  and  Agrippa, 
John  and  Judas,  Christ  and  Caiaphas. 

As  the  gulf,  which  separates  the  Kingdom  of  God 
from  the  Kingdom  of  the  world  is  invisible,  so  is 
the  mystic  bond  which  unites  in  one  great  brother- 
hood the  citizens  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  In  this 
Kingdom  whose  only  law  is  love  —  doing  justly, 
loving  mercy,  and  walking  in  reverent  and  affection- 
ate companionship  with  the  All-Father,  we  its  citi- 
zens, are  united  by  a  common  purpose  to  make  life 
worth  living  and  this  world  a  happier  because  a  bet- 
ter world  to  live  in ;  and  by  a  common  hope,  an  as- 
surance that  we  shall  succeed,  because  we  are  not 
only  engaged  in  our  Father's  business  but  are  work- 
ing in  his  companionship  and  under  the  Leader 
whom  he  has  given  to  us.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
Christians  regarded  themselves  as  pupils  preparing 


i8o     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

for  a  better  world ;  in  the  twentieth  century  they  re- 
gard themselves  as  architects  and  builders  engaged 
in  making  a  better  world.  There  is  truth  in  both 
conceptions;  but  the  latter  appears  to  me  more  in 
accord  with  the  teaching  and  life  of  the  Master. 
Our  school  is  a  practice  school ;  an  ambition  both  to 
acquire  and  show  proficiency  by  practice  inspires  our 
energies  and  rules  our  life. 

Out  of  this  Kingdom  have  grown  churches  with 
their  creeds,  philanthropies  with  their  constitutions, 
schools  and  colleges  with  their  staffs  of  officials. 
But  the  Kingdom  has  neither  creed,  nor  constitution, 
nor  officials.  Church  history  informs  us  that  the 
creeds  have  been  made  for  the  purpose,  not  of  in- 
cluding all  Christlike  spirits,  but  of  excluding  all 
of  unorthodox  opinions.  When  we  meet  in  church 
assemblies  to  consider  plans  for  Christian  unity,  the 
schemes  proposed  generally  include  acceptance  of 
the  same  creed,  the  same  sacraments  and  the  same 
form  of  church  organization.  The  process  is  dis- 
appointingly slow,  the  results  disappointingly  inef- 
fective. But  when  we  cease  talking  about  union 
and  engage  in  practical  work,  we  find  ourselves  sur- 
prisingly at   one.     Where   is   the   Protestant   who 


THY  KINGDOM  COME  ON  EARTH         i8i 

does  not  honor  the  Christlike  courage  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Cardinal  Mercier  in  his  single-handed  de- 
fense of  Belgium  against  the  brigands  who  had  over- 
run it?  Where  is  the  Churchman  who  does  not 
honor  the  self-devotion  of  the  Quaker  Herbert 
Hoover  to  his  task  of  administering  the  charities  of 
a  united  humanity  in  feeding  the  starving  millions 
of  devastated  and  plague-stricken  Europe?  While 
we  have  been  discussing  theological  plans  for  adopt- 
ing some  common  symbols,  behold,  without  a  plan, 
our  work  for  our  fellow  men  has  united  us  in  a  Red 
Cross  Society  and  we  have  hung  the  symbol  of  love, 
service  and  sacrifice  in  the  windows  of  Roman  Cath- 
olics, Protestants,  Jews  and  Agnostics. 

Nor  is  it  only  in  work  we  are  united  but  also 
in  our  worship.  "  Theologians,"  wrote  William 
Wordsworth  to  his  friend,  "  may  puzzle  their  heads 
about  dogmas  as  they  will,  the  religion  of  gratitude 
cannot  mislead  us.  Of  that  we  are  sure,  and  grati- 
tude is  the  handmaid  to  hope  and  hope  the  harbinger 
of  faith."  We  may  look  in  the  creeds  for  conflict- 
ing opinions;  but  it  is  in  our  hymn  books  we  must 
look  for  the  experience  of  our  faith  and  hope  and 
love.     When  in   1850  Henry  Ward  Beecher  pub- 


i82     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

lished  the  Plymouth  Collection,  he  was  sharply 
criticized  by  religious  journals  for  including  in  it 
hymns  by  Roman  Catholic  and  Unitarian  singers. 
But  now  we  invite  to  lead  us  in  our  worship  The 
Calvlnistic  Toplady,  in  "  Rock  of  Ages  cleft  for  me," 
the  Methodist  Charles  Wesley,  in  "  Jesus  Lover  of 
my  soul,"  the  Roman  Catholic  Cardinal  Newman  in 
"Lead,  Kindly  Light,"  the  Quaker  Whittier  in 
"  Dear  Lord  and  Father  of  Mankind,"  and  the  Uni- 
tarian Miss  Adams  in  "  Nearer,  My  God,  to  thee." 
As  both  the  boundaries  of  this  kingdom  and  the 
bonds  which  unite  its  citizens  in  one  great  Brother- 
hood are  invisible,  so  is  the  law  which  governs  it. 
It  is  not  engraven  on  stone  nor  written  on  parch- 
ment. The  Ten  Commandments  are  not  laws  issued 
by  a  King  to  which  the  citizens  are  subject ;  they  are 
interpretations  of  laws  wrought  in  man's  nature  by 
the  Creator.  The  laws  of  health  are  the  laws  of 
God  because  the  body  is  the  creation  of  God.  Simi- 
larly the  spiritual  laws  are  the  laws  of  God  because 
they  are  the  laws  of  his  own  being,  and  he  is  the 
Father  of  our  spirits  and  we  inherit  from  him  his 
nature.  What  we  call  the  moral  laws  are  as  truly 
natural  as  are  the  laws  of  light,  heat,  electricity  and 


THY  KINGDOM  COME  ON  EARTH        183 

gravitation.  The  difference  is  that  man  can  violate 
the  laws  of  God,  material  nature  cannot  violate 
them.  As  the  eye  is  made  for  seeing  and  the  ear  for 
hearing  and  the  lungs  for  breathing,  so  the  mind  is 
made  to  perceive  and  apprehend  truth  and  the  con- 
science to  perceive  and  appreciate  right  and  wrong 
and  the  affections  to  hate  that  which  is  evil  and  love 
that  which  is  good.  Paul's  counsel,  "  Abhor  that 
which  is  evil,  cleave  to  that  which  is  good,"  is  an  in- 
terpretation to  man  of  his  own  divine  nature.  De- 
pravity is  not  natural;  it  is,  as  Bushnell  has  said, 
contra-natural.  The  non-theological  man  recog- 
nizes this  truth  and  calls  the  mother  who  deserts  her 
child  an  "  unnatural  "  mother. 

To  Paganism  God  was  a  King;  but  Jesus  told  his 
disciples,  "When  ye  pray  say  Our  Father."  One 
difference  between  a  king  and  a  father  is  this:  the 
king  issues  laws  and  demands  of  his  subjects  obedi- 
ence—  nothing  more.  The  father  also  demands 
nothing  more ;  but  he  wants  more.  He  wants  to  be 
his  child's  ideal  and  the  object  of  his  child's  reverenc- 
ing love.  The  father  needs  the  child  no  less  than 
the  child  needs  the  father.  The  child  needs  some 
one  to  care  for  him;  the  father  needs  some  one  to 


i84     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

care  for ;  the  child  needs  some  one  to  love  him ;  the 
father  needs  some  one  to  love.  Our  needs  make  us 
dear  to  God.  Therefore  it  is  that  Jesus  sums  up  all 
the  laws  of  the  Kingdom  in  the  saying,  "  Thou  shalt 
love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart  and  with 
all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind,  and  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself." 

Because  the  laws  of  God  are  the  laws  of  our  own 
nature,  because  his  commands  are  only  calls  to  us  to 
live  normal,  natural  lives,  the  kind  of  lives  for  which 
we  are  fitted,  his  Kingdom  is  a  free  Commonwealth. 
It  has  been  well  called  by  a  modern  scholar  "  The 
Republic  of  God."  To  live  divinely  is  to  live  freely. 
The  commandments  of  God  are  not  restraints  on  our 
liberty  but  inspirations  to  liberty,  for  they  are  inter- 
pretations to  us  of  our  own  true  nature,  and  ideals 
of  what  we  can  become.  If  we  are  true  to  ourselves 
we  shall  be  true  to  God,  for  we  are  his  offspring. 

Into  these  few  pages  I  have  tried  to  condense 
the  experience  of  a  lifetime.  Into  a  few  linos  I 
here  endeavor  to  condense  the  message  of  these 
pages. 

Christianity  means  to  me : 


THY  KINGDOM  COME  ON  EARTH         185 

A  new  spirit  of  love  service  and  sacrifice  in  hu- 
manity. 

A  new  and  ever  developing  life  in  art,  literature, 
music,  philosophy,  government,  industry,  worship. 

A  relief  from  the  heavy  burden  of  remorse  for 
past  errors,  blunders,  and  sins. 

An  ever  growing  aspiration  for  the  future  and  an 
ever  increasing  power  toward  achievement. 

Faith  in  ourselves  and  in  our  fellow  men ;  in  our 
infinite  possibilities  because  in  our  infinite  inherit- 
ance. 

Faith  in  the  great  enterprise  in  which  God's  loyal 
children  are  engaged,  that  of  making  a  new  world 
out  of  this  old  world,  a  faith  which  failure  does  not 
discourage  nor  death  destroy. 

Faith  in  a  Leader  who  both  sets  us  our  task  and 
shares  it  with  us ;  the  longer  we  follow  him  and  work 
with  him,  the  more  worthy  to  be  loved,  trusted  and 
followed  does  he  seem  to  us  to  be. 

Faith  in  a  companionable  God  whom  we  cannot 
understand,  still  less  define,  but  with  whom  we  can 
be  acquainted,  as  a  little  child  is  acquainted  with  his 
mysterious  mother. 

Faith  in  our  present  possession  of  a  deathless  life 


i86     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

of  the  spirit,  which  we  share  with  the  Father  of  (5ur 
spirits  and  our  divinely  appreciated  leader. 

The  autobiography  of  the  unknown  author  of  the 
one  hundred  and  third  psalm  is  the  story  of  our  past 
experience : 

Bless  the  Lord,  O  my  soul, 

And  forget  not  all  his  benefits : 

Who  f orgiveth  all  thine  iniquities ; 

Who  healeth  all  thy  diseases ; 

Who  redeemeth  thy  life  from  destruction; 

Who  crowneth  thee  with  loving-kindness  and  tender 

mercies; 
Who  satisfieth  thine  age  with  good ; 
So  that  thy  youth  is  renewed  like  the  eagle. 

The  prayer  of  the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles  is  the 
expression  of  our  hope  for  the  future: 

For  this  cause  I  bow  my  knees  unto  the  Father, 
from  whom  every  family  in  heaven  and  on  earth  is 
named,  that  he  will  grant  you  according  to  the  riches 
of  his  glory,  to  be  strengthened  with  might,  by  his 
Spirit  in  the  inner  man,  that  Christ  may  dwell  in 
your  hearts  by  faith,  that  ye  being  rooted  and 
grounded  in  love,  may  be  able  to  comprehend  with 


THY  KINGDOM  COME  ON  EARTH        187 

all  saints,  what  is  the  breadth,  and  length,  and  depth, 
and  height ;  and  to  know  the  love  of  Christ,  which 
passeth  knowledge,  that  ye  might  be  filled  with  all 
the  fullness  of  God. 


EPILOGUE 

Howard  S.  Bliss  was  associated  with  me  in  the 
pastorate  of  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  for  four 
years.  Then,  after  a  successful  independent  pas- 
torate in  New  Jersey,  he  accepted  a  call  to  become 
the  successor  of  his  father,  the  Reverend  Daniel 
Bliss,  as  President  of  the  Syrian  Protestant  College 
at  Beirut,  Syria.  During  the  Great  War  (1914- 
1918)  he  preserved  the  College  despite  the  machina- 
tions of  astute  and  powerful  foes,  and  maintained 
peace  within  the  College  between  students  who 
belonged  to  the  races  and  shared  the  religious  faiths 
of  those  who  were  grappling  in  deadly  strife  with- 
out. Then,  his  task  accomplished,  he  came  home  to 
die.  Eager  student,  loyal  friend,  chivalric  soldier, 
patriotic  American,  devoted  Christian,  his  last  mes- 
sage to  his  generation  was  an  article  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  published  a  few  weeks  before  his  death. 
From  this,  the  culmination  of  his  great  career,  I 
quote  the  following  sentences  which  I  would  gladly 

make  the  culmination  of  my  life's  teaching: 

188 


EPILOGUE  189 

Does  Christ  save  you  from  your  sin? 
Call  Him  Savior! 

Does  He   free  you   from  the  slavery  of  your 
passions? 

Call  Him  Redeemer! 

Does  He  teach  you  as  no  one  else  has  taught  you? 
Call  Him  Teacher! 

Does  he  mold  and  master  your  life? 
Call  Him  Master! 

Does  He  shine  upon  the  pathway  that  is  dark  to 
you? 

Call  Him  Guide! 

Does  He  reveal  God  to  you? 
Call  Him  the  Son  of  God! 

Does  He  reveal  man? 

Call  Him  the  Son  of  Man! 

Or,  in  following  Him,  are  your  lips  silent  in 
your  incapacity  to  define  Him  and  His  influence 
upon  you? 

Call  Him  by  no  name,  but  follow  Him! 


APPENDIX 

There  are  three  sayings  of  Jesus  reported  in  the  Gospels 
which  CathoHc  scholars  regard  as  supporting  the  claim 
that  Jesus  gave  to  the  apostles  certain  peculiar  ecclesias- 
tical powers  which  they  were  authorized  and  enabled  to 
transmit  to  their  successors  in  office.  These  are  (i) 
"  Thou  art  Peter,  and  upon  this  rock  I  will  build  my 
church ;  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against 
it"  (Matt.  i6:  i8).  (2)  "I  will  give  unto  thee  the  keys 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven:  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt 
bind  on  earth  shall  be  bound  in  heaven :  and  whatsoever 
thou  shalt  loose  on  earth  shall  be  loosed  in  heaven " 
(Matt.  16:  19  Compare  Matt.  18:  18).  (3)  "Jesus  there- 
fore said  unto  them  again,  Peace  be  with  you;  as  the 
Father  has  sent  me  even  so  send  I  you.  And  when  he 
had  said  this  he  breathed  on  them  and  saith  unto  them, 
Receive  ye  the  Holy  Spirit :  whosoever  sins  ye  remit, 
they  are  remitted  them;  whosoever  sins  ye  retain,  they 
are  retained."  My  interpretation  of  the  first  of  these 
passages  I  have  given  in  Chapter  HI.  My  interpretation 
of  the  other  two  here  given  are  condensed  and  in  one 
respect  modified  from  those  given  in  my  commentary  on 
the  New  Testament:   (1875-1876). 

I.  And  I  will  give  unto  thee  the  Keys  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven. 
The  key  in  the  East  was  a  symbol  of  authority,  was 
made  long,  with  a  crook  at  one  end,  so  that  it  could  be 

191 


192     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

worn  round  the  neck  as  a  badge  of  office.  To  this  use  of 
the  key  reference  is  had  in  the  phrase,  "  The  government 
shall  be  upon  his  shoulder"  (Isaiah  9:6)  and  in  the 
promise  to  Eliakim,  "  The  key  of  the  house  of  David  I 
will  lay  upon  his  shoulder"  (Isaiah  22:22).  The  phrase 
"  kingdom  of  heaven "  in  the  Gospels  never  means  the 
visible,  external,  organic  church,  and  rarely,  if  ever,  the 
future  state  in  contrast  with  the  present,  but  the  reign 
of  God  in  the  individual  soul,  or  in  the  community.  The 
"  keys  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  "  do  not,  then,  symbolize 
power  to  admit  or  exclude  from  the  earthly  church,  or 
from  heaven,  but  power  in  the  life  of  allegiance  to  God, 
i.  e.  in  the  Christian  life.  The  word  bind  is  never  used 
in  the  N.  T.  as  a  metaphor  for  condemnation,  but  is 
used  metaphorically  for  binding  the  individual  by  laws, 
as  in  Rom.  7 : 2,  I  Cor.  7 :  27,  39 ;  and  the  word  loose  is 
never  used  as  a  symbol  for  pardon  or  deliverance  from 
sin,  but  always,  either  literally  of  unbinding  or  dissolving, 
as  in  Mark  1:7;  2  Pet.  3,  10,  11,  12,  or  metaphorically 
of  the  relaxing  or  dissolving  of  a  law,  as  in  Matt.  5:  19; 
John  5:18;  7 :  23 ;  10 :  35 ;  I  Cor.  7 :  27.  The  words 
"  bind  "  and  "  loose  "  had  also  this  well  established  signi- 
ficance among  the  Jewish  rabbis,  being  nearly  equivalent 
to  "prohibit"  and  "permit." 

Two  questions  remain  to  be  asked  and  answered:  First, 
On  whom  is  this  gift  bestowed?  Certainly  not  on  Peter 
and  his  successors  in  office,  for  neither  here  nor  anywhere 
else  in  the  N.  T.  is  there  any  hint  that  he  had  either 
office  or  successors.  In  Matt.  18 :  18  it  is  conferred  cer- 
tainly on  all  the  twelve ;  and  since  it  is  there  coupled  with 
instructions  concerning  forgiveness,  and  a  promise  con- 
cerning prayer,  which  are  of  universal  application,  it 
may  safely  be  regarded  as  not  confined  to  them,  but  be- 


APPENDIX  193 

stowed  on  all  who  possess  a  divinely  inspired  faith  in 
Christ  the  Son  of  the  living  God,  Second,  Are  there 
any  parallel  passages  to  this  promise,  as  thus  interpreted? 
Confessedly  there  are  none  which  sustain  the  papal  in- 
terpretation. The  supposed  power  of  the  pope  to  admit 
to  and  shut  out  from  heaven  rest  solely  on  this  one 
verse,  though  John  20 :  23  is  cited  in  support  of  his  power 
to  remit  or  retain  sin.  On  the  other  hand,  the  right  of 
the  individual  Christian  to  rely  daily  upon  the  personal 
help  of  a  living  Savior,  and  to  be  governed  in  his  life, 
not  by  laws  and  rules  and  regulations,  but  by  the  in- 
dwelling Spirit  of  God,  illuminating  and  inspiring  his 
conscience,  is  abundantly  confirmed  by  other  passages  of 
scripture.  See  for  example  John  8 :  32,  36 ;  Rom.  7 :  6 ;  2 
Cor.  3:17;  5:7;  Gal.  3:25;  4:7,  31;  5:1,  16,  18;  Col. 
2 :  14-16,  20-22. 

I  understand,  then,  the  promise  of  the  keys  to  be  made 
to  Peter  as  the  possessor  of  a  living  faith  in  Jesus  as  the 
Divine  Messiah,  and  through  him  to  all  who,  by  a  like 
faith,  are  endued  with  a  like  strength  of  character,  God- 
given,  and  I  would  paraphrase  it  thus:  To  my  disciples 
I  will  give  authority  in  their  spiritual  life,  so  that  they 
shall  no  longer  be  bound  by  rules  and  regulations  like 
those  of  the  Pharisees  or  of  the  Mosaic  code,  but  what- 
soever, under  the  inspiration  of  a  living  faith  in  me,  they 
shall  prohibit  themselves,  God  will  prohibit,  and  what- 
soever under  that  inspiration  they  shall  permit  themselves, 
God  will  permit:  for  they  shall  have  the  mind  of  the 
spirit. 

II.  Whosoever  sins  you   remit  they  are  remitted  unto 
them,  etc. 
The  word  remit  signifies  primarily  to  get  rid  of.    It  is 


194     WHAT  CHRISTIANITY  MEANS  TO  ME 

not  penalty  but  sin  which  the  apostles  are  empowered 
to  get  rid  of.  See  chapter  VIII  in  this  book.  Compare 
Micah  7:19;  Isaiah  44:22.  Here  therefore  there  is  no 
hint  of  any  authority  in  apostle  or  apostolic  successor 
to  declare  sins  forgiven  or  unforgiven  in  his  discretion; 
there  is  the  declaration  that  when  the  disciple  of  Christ 
is  filled  with  the  Christ  spirit  and  sets  himself  in  the 
spirit  of  his  Master  to  cure  men  of  their  sins,  his  work 
shall  not  be  in  vain  —  the  devil  cast  out  shall  not  return 
to  find  the  house  swept  and  garnished  so  that  he  may  take 
possession  again.  The  second  clause  is  more  difficult  of 
interpretation.  Taken  literally  it  would  seem  to  imply 
power  to  fasten  it  upon  the  sinner  as  by  a  curse.  But 
can  this  language  be  taken  literally?  It  is  capable  of  a 
merely  negative  interpretation.  The  meaning  then  would 
be,  You  have  power  to  redeem  men  from  their  sins ;  there- 
fore the  responsibility  is  laid  upon  you.  If  you  fail  the 
sins  will  be  retained.  History  confirms  this  interpretation. 
The  Wesleyan  movement,  the  Salvation  Army,  the  temper- 
ance, anti-slavery,  and  other  reforms,  attest  the  truth 
that  persons  possessed  of  a  Christ-like  spirit  of  purity, 
courage,  and  self-sacrifice  have  a  marvelous  power  to 
cast  out  evil  from  the  individuals  and  from  the  commu- 
nity, though  they  may  have  no  office  in  the  church,  while 
on  the  other  hand,  that  power  has  never  been  possessed 
by  the  mere  ecclesiastical  office  holder,  if  he  was  not  en- 
dowed with  the  Christ-like  spirit. 


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